The Rise of Asia’s Middle Class
How the burgeoning middle class can be good for governance
Originally posted on August 31, 2010
In yesterday’s Philippine Inquirer, Jong-Wha Lee, the chief economist for the Asian Development Bank, penned an op-ed discussing an alternative way of looking at the problem of poverty in Asia. In the opening paragraphs, he explains the issues:
THE MANTRA across developing Asia since the 1960s has been poverty reduction. Huge strides were made during the Asian “miracle.” Yet two-thirds of the world’s poor remain in Asia. More needs to be done, but how?
Perhaps we need to flip the coin. Instead of just “pushing” people out of poverty, we should also aim at bolstering the rapid expansion of the middle class as a magnet to “pull” people out of poverty, providing an anchor for sustained and more inclusive economic growth.
This is good global economics as well. As households in advanced economies get a handle on excessive debt and start to save, developing Asia’s rising middle class holds the key to rebalancing the region’s economies more toward consumption. Asia’s emerging consumers are likely to assume the traditional role that the US and European middle classes played as global consumers.
The rationale behind this theory, as I understand it, is that a rising tide lifts all ships. So a growing middle class with higher incomes and greater purchasing power will increase domestic demand for consumer products and services, which will have the compounding effect of creating more jobs and lift more people out of poverty and into the middle class. Here is what Lee has to say:
As Asia continues on the path of rapid poverty reduction over the next 20 years, the middle class is expected to grow commensurately. ADB estimates the size of the Asian middle class will expand to 2.7 billion by 2030. China and India will see the largest number of graduates to middle class status.
But defining Asia’s middle class is more than just numbers. With better income, people’s attitudes move away from the poor’s survival instinct to the “luxury” of being able to plan ahead. Permanent jobs provide stable incomes that can finance stable consumption patterns. It also creates a class that increasingly demands good governance and better social safety nets that ensure higher quality education, health care and pension systems. The middle class is more likely to have values aligned with greater market competition, greater gender equality, perceptions of upward mobility and more investment in science and technology than those of the poor.
So the middle class are more demanding and expect more from their politicians. They expect better social services and adequate support, and have a stronger and louder voice than before when it comes to politics. The poor are easy to marginalize in politics, which is as much about money as anything else. It is easier to manipulate and take advantage of the poor than it is a more financially independent and established middle class. This mix of increased government accountability and a more robust economy fueled by the mutually-reinforcing tandem of increased domestic demand and growth in the infrastructure to support it will create more opportunities for the poor. In other words, instead of empowering the poor and trying to create opportunities for them to improve their situation organically – the “push” approach to poverty alleviation – a more prudent approach would be to nurture and foster growth among the burgeoning middle class, which will produce the macro-level changes a country needs to improve its poverty situation. The improvement in the environment of the country will pull its poor out of poverty in a self-reinforcing pattern of improvement.