Africans are mainly rich or poor, but not middle class

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21676774-africans-are-mainly-rich-or-poor-not-middle-class-should-worry

by luu • 11 years ago

62 70 11 years ago

economist.com

joe_the_user2• 11 years ago

The problem is that the dominant model of development today seems to involve increased wealth inequality rather than the creation of a stable middle class.

For example, China's development has involved considerable wealth inequality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_China

jvm2• 11 years ago

Most income inequality (taken on a worldwide basis) is between country, not within country. Overall global income inequality is dropping considerably, with China playing a large part.

https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/621684418558734337
https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/654709684985688064

joe_the_user2• 11 years ago

World scale inequality seems like a bit of a canard.

If inequality between nations drops, a measure of inequality on a world scale could drop while inequality within each particular nation increases. China or Africa's development means the average very poor person is closer to the average Westerner, dropping total inequality. But that doesn't stop recent models of development from involving considerable inequality and indeed a model of inequality (just as inequality has increased within the US). Moreover, it's the inequality within each area that one would expect to have the harmful or beneficial effects on democracy, civil society and so-forth.

Edit: Of course it is hard to reply to a link to a tweet of a bit map of a graph with resolution too poor to read the references of, hence my general comment.

BorisMelnik• 11 years ago

Isn't this kind of exactly the same sentiment as "the middle class is disappearing in the USA?"

johansch• 11 years ago

Taken to an extreme.

RyanZAG• 11 years ago

It's kind of the opposite. Scroll down to the chart showing 2004 vs 2014. The middle class is actually growing very rapidly - far more rapidly than the growth of the middle class during industrial revolution Europe, and in contrast to the shrinking middle class of USA today.

Anybody complaining it is 'too slow' is living in a dream world without realizing that moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts. Something as simple from using a hole in the ground as a toilet to the huge infrastructure of piped plumbing from dams is an enormous change in culture. Take the monthly costs of such infrastructure which must be paid and enforced across a population that previously did not have those kinds of burdens for a quick spot check on culture.

astazangasta2• 11 years ago

moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts.

This is wrong. I recommend reading Ha-Joon Chang,a wonderful heterodox economist who is fond of pointing out that his native South Korea went from the development status of Madagascar to one of the largest economies in the world in a scant 50 years. This doesn't take forever.

tertius3• 11 years ago

I'd add that rich is relative.

I'm South African and I generally agree with this assertion but poor is defined as something that is really non-existant in the U.S.

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered middle class.

So the title is not very informative to someone not used to the context.

* I'm South African living in Houston, TX.

eveningcoffee2• 11 years ago

* I'm South African living in Houston, TX. *

I am sorry, what is "here" then here?

mc32• 11 years ago

I think it's the article's point of reference.

tertius3• 11 years ago

I see that it was confusing.

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered middle class.

Should be:

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered middle class there.

Retric4• 11 years ago

Minimum wage does not qualify for middle class. The idea is it's what's between the rich and the working class.

So ~50% to ~95-99% income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class So, ~50k to ~170k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States

Programmers generally qualify but a dental assistants @35k generally does not.

tertius3• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, my wording was confusing and not clear enough.

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered middle class.

Should be:

And minimum wage here, is really the bottom end of what would be considered middle class there.

cup4• 11 years ago

"On a continent once synonymous with war, famine and poverty,"

I always find it interesting how the west so easily glosses over colonization, which is integral to all three of those other things.

The interesting thing though that they miss completely, is that in the last 10 years the percentage of people living middle class lives have nearly doubled in a lot of African countries, which is a huge achievement.

Retric4• 11 years ago

"Gloss over colonization"

Don't whitewash history, the wars where generally smaller scale, but pre colonization there was plenty of war, famine, and poverty.

cup4• 11 years ago

Sure, just like there was plenty of war, famine and poverty around the world but lets not "whitewash" history by suggesting what we see in Africa and other countries aren't a direct effect of European colonization.

jnwrd• 11 years ago

Africa was not blessed with the greatest geography for capital formation. The most interesting question is why Africa did not develop prior to the period of colonization, in the time period from say 1000-1500 CE when Europe when from a position of relatively inferior capital, to relatively superior capital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P....

At this stage in human development capital generation is pretty much completely agricultural, and thus the productivity of the land is the chief determinant of societal outcomes.

meric7• 11 years ago

In fact they did, Carthage and Egypt. These African powers at the time competed against the Romans and Greeks to the north.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage

douche5• 11 years ago

The history of mankind is a long tapestry of colonization.

If we accept that Homo Sapiens expanded out of Africa, into the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and then across the Bering land bridge into North America, and eventually down into South America, that is all a series of colonization events. As is Polynesian expansion throughout the South Pacific. As is the series of invasions that rocked the Mediterranean world around 1200 BCE, or the expansions of the Celtic culture in Iron Age Europe, or the Classic Greek diaspora, or the migrations of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Lombards, and others in that era. The colonization of the Yangtze valley and Guangdong by the northern Han Chinese culture. The Slavic migrations into eastern Europe and the Balkans. The migrations of the Turks, Muslim Arabs, and Mongols. The Romans who colonized Celtic Britain, who were colonized by the Saxons, Angles and Jutes, who were colonized by Danes and other Norse, who were colonized by the Franco-Normans. The Irish colonized Scotland, and were in turn colonized in a series of waves by England.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, you have the Bantu expansion[1], which displaced or assimilated other pre-existing cultures.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_expansion

Geekette• 11 years ago

The only reliable factoid mentioned is that good data on demographics of African are hard to come by. Thus, info like economic projections for the continent as released by various organizations are equally shifty.

tim333• 11 years ago

Africa's coming along but from a low base. See Hans Rosling's 2015 visualisation. Asia in red, Africa blue, Europe yellow:

https://youtu.be/_JhD37gSNVU?t=55s

Africans are mainly rich or poor, but not middle class

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