This chapter examines changes in the distribution of the global population by income from 2001 to 2011 with a focus on the middle-income population, or the global middle class. The analysis encompasses 111 countries, which accounted for 88% of the global population and 85% of world output in 2011. It finds that just 13% of the global population could be considered middle income in 2011. Although this was nearly double the share of middle income in 2001, the rise in prosperity was limited to a few regions, namely China, South America, and Eastern Europe. The middle class barely expanded in India and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America, and most of the global population remained poor or low income.

/pdf/a-global-middle-class-is-more-promise-than-reality-2a6ypdwsvs.pdf

A global middle class is more promise than reality

We introduce two separate datasets (The Global Consumption Dataset (GCD) and The Global Income Dataset (GID)) making possible an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The current benchmark version of the dataset presents estimates of monthly real consumption and income for quantiles of the population (a ‘consumption/income profile’) for more than 160 countries and more than half a century (1960-2015). We describe the construction of the datasets and demonstrate possible uses by presenting some sample results concerning the distribution of consumption, poverty and inequality in the world.

/pdf/the-global-consumption-and-income-project-gcip-an-overview-3ew3x36tk9.pdf

The Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP): An Overview

Although the sectors and fraction of workers covered are small given the low rates of formality and urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), as the number of covered workers grows wage regulation will become increasingly significant. We find that higher minimum wage values are associated with higher GDP per capita. Importantly, however, we find that the minimum wage relative to the mean wage is higher in low income countries than in lower- and upper-middle income countries. Indeed, SSA as a whole reflects a bias towards a more aggressive minimum wage policy compared to the rest of the world. There is limited research on the employment effect of minimum wages in SSA, but the few findings are consistent with the broad summary of global research. By and large, introducing and raising the minimum wage has a small negative impact or no measurable negative impact. However, there is significant variation around this average finding -- the employment elasticities are not constant nor linear. Where increases in a minimum wage are large and immediate, this can result in employment losses, but more modest increases usually have very little observably adverse effects and may have positive impacts on wages. The great variability in findings on employment could be due partly to the great variation in the detail of the minimum wage regimes and schedules country by country, but also by the variations in compliance. We find that higher Kaitz indices are associated with higher levels of non-compliance. The release of country-level earnings and employment data at regular intervals lies at the heart of a future country-focused minimum wage research agenda for Africa.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/dp9204.pdf?abstractid=2655153&mirid=2

Minimum Wages in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Primer

The latest global survey on relative prices and income levels, for the year 2011, showed changes to relative income levels that were larger in lower income countries, thereby narrowing the world income distribution compared to estimates based on the previous, 2005, survey. This paper examines whether changes in measurement methodology between the 2005 and 2011 survey can explain these large differences. We construct a counterfactual set of relative prices for 2005 that harmonizes measurement, and we no longer find systematic differences across income levels, implying that international income inequality based on the 2005 survey was overstated.

/pdf/cross-country-income-levels-over-time-did-the-developing-4tsxp5b5cq.pdf

Cross-country income levels over time: did the developing world suddenly become much richer?

We introduce two separate datasets (The Global Consumption Dataset (GCD) and The Global Income Dataset (GID)) making possible an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The current benchmark version of the dataset presents estimates of monthly real consumption and income for every percentile of the population (a ‘consumption/income profile’) for more than 160 countries and more than half a century (1960-2015). We describe the construction of the datasets and demonstrate possible uses by presenting some sample results concerning the distribution of consumption, poverty and inequality in the world.

/pdf/the-global-consumption-and-income-project-gcip-an-overview-3kfayh5o4s.pdf

Much of the data underlying global poverty and inequality estimates is not in the public domain, but can be accessed in small pieces using the World Bank’s PovcalNet online tool. To overcome these limitations and reproduce this database in a format more useful to researchers, we ran approximately 23 million queries of the World Bank’s web site, accessing only information that was already in the public domain. This web scraping exercise produced 10,000 points on the cumulative distribution of income or consumption from each of 942 surveys spanning 127 countries over the period 1977 to 2012. This short note describes our methodology, briefly discusses some of the relevant intellectual property issues, and illustrates the kind of calculations that are facilitated by this data set, including growth incidence curves and poverty rates using alternative PPP indices. The full data can be downloaded at www.

/pdf/we-just-ran-twenty-three-million-queries-of-the-world-bank-s-4eqaibpevj.pdf

We Just Ran Twenty- Three Million Queries of the World Bank's Website

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We Just Ran Twenty- Three Million Queries of the World Bank's Website