'Should We Call it Middle Class?' Economic and Political Stakes of the Middle Income Group Expansion in Vietnam
Fiche du document
2019
- ISIDORE Id: 10670/1.d0fad7...
- Report N°: AFD Research Papers Series no. 2019-94
- hal: hal-02147450
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Mots-clés
O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth/O.O5 - Economywide Country Studies/O.O5.O53 - Asia including Middle East P - Economic Systems/P.P3 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions/P.P3.P36 - Consumer Economics • Health • Education and Training • Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty I - Health, Education, and Welfare/I.I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty/I.I3.I31 - General Welfare, Well-Being -fin]Sujets proches
Fortunes Household income Personal income Family incomeCiter ce document
Jean-Philippe Berrou et al., « 'Should We Call it Middle Class?' Economic and Political Stakes of the Middle Income Group Expansion in Vietnam », HAL SHS (Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société), ID : 10670/1.d0fad7...
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Résumé
Middle class expansion in formerly poor countries has become the focus point of business groups, development banks and national governments over the latter decade. By naturalizing an income group into a social class with political agency, they misapprehend what exactly are these “people in the middle” and what exactly are their margins of influence on the economy and public policies. By combining microeconomic data on economic and social characteristics of middle income earners taken from the national representative living conditions survey and primary data on subjective perceptions of a representative sample of middle class household heads, we find that the Vietnamese middle-income earners (1) now represent a significant share of the population, (2) are strongly heterogeneous in terms of income, occupation and status, (3) comprises a large share of highly vulnerable households facing high individual risks uncovered by social protection, (4) is not a significant source of political change
