ABSTRACT
Introduction Middle-income countries (MICs), the homes to the ‘global middle class’, are also currently homes to two billion other people – 80 per cent of the world’s poor who live on under USD 2 per day (World Bank, 2013). Two-thirds of the world’s population, who live on under USD 1.25 per day, live in MICs. Although above the global poverty line (and even national poverty lines), many of the people who are classified as part of the new middle class may, in fact, hover just above the poverty line and remain vulnerable to poverty. Moreover, a significant proportion of this ‘middle’ may engage in informal, precarious work that exacerbates multiple vulnerabilities. As such, many in the middle may face realities that are similar to those of their poor counterparts. It is too soon to celebrate the growth of this middle as the motor of growth and domestic demand. The fleeting gains made on one score, poverty reduction, often get lost because of unabated or worsened unemployment and inequalities that token policies often fail to address in meaningful ways.
