• According to Brookings Institute, by 2020, more than half of the world’s population will be in the middle-class.  
• While the economic anxiety of the developed world’s middle class is real, the citizens of the developing countries have been escaping extreme poverty by hundreds of millions.
• Because of its sheer size, the global middle-class is the darling of multinational corporations.

Global middle-class is rising, but nationalism might stop the rise soon.  While the developed world’s middle-class is shrinking, the citizens of the developing countries have been escaping extreme poverty by hundreds of millions.   

According to the Brookings Institute, by 2020, more than half of the world’s population will be in the middle-class.   Unlike their affluent counterparts who are feeling alienated, forgotten, and anxious, the developing world’s middle-class is very optimistic about the future.

The Global Middle-Class Rising

Movements such as Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France, Occupy Wall Street in America, and Brexit in England are signs of severe cracks in the proverbial capitalistic wall.  The developed world’s middle-class is often the organizer and proponent of those protests. International trades and movement of people and capital have not delivered to rich countries’ middle-class as they did for developing and emerging nations.

Over the past few decades, citizens from emerging and developing countries have been escaping extreme poverty by hundreds of millions. Nigeria, China, and India’s middle-class have been exploding, so does the Southeast Asian and West African middle-class.

Because of its sheer size, the global middle-class is the darling of multinational corporations. The upper-class are too few in numbers to be as significant as the middle-class, and the working-class does not have enough disposable income.

Government Challenge

The stubborn challenge for developed countries’ leaders is to find ways to articulate to their middle-class that the rising of emerging and frontier countries’ middle-class does not pose any threat to them.  Brexit, Donald Trump, and  Five Star Movement ( Movimento 5 in Italy) are proof that rich countries’ middle-class is worried about the rise of the global middle-class.