{"id":2501,"date":"2010-05-19T09:08:53","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T08:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=2501"},"modified":"2010-05-19T09:08:53","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T08:08:53","slug":"does-india-have-a-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=2501","title":{"rendered":"Does India have a middle class?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the thinking outlined in <a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/India-has-no-middle-class\/articleshow\/5895989.cms\">this article<\/a>, it seems that India has no\u00a0 middle class.<\/p>\n<p>The central point is that there are essentially two ways to measure  inequality, one is in absolute terms and the other is in relative terms.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the definition of middle class used in the article is that it  mixes the two measures, using both an absolute one (above $10 a day)  with a relative one (top 5%). Hence the seeming nonsense of no middle  class in India.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably the best way of measuring income inequality is through the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gini_coefficient  \">Gini  coefficient<\/a>.\u00a0 On this measure, India scores 36.8 as set out <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_countries_by_income_equality  \">here<\/a>. This\u00a0 is very similar to the value of the coefficient\u00a0 for the UK of 36.<\/p>\n<p>However, as well as the current level of the Gini coefficient, one needs  to look at the change in the coefficient. In both India and the UK, the  figure is rising (that is, inequality is increasing) but, in India, the  rate is growing even faster than in the UK as illustrated <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gini_coefficient#US_income_Gini_indices_over_time\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the thinking outlined in this article, it seems that India has no\u00a0 middle class. The central point is that there are essentially two ways to measure inequality, one is in absolute terms and the other is in relative terms. The problem with the definition of middle class used in the article is that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2526,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}