Should we call it a (middle) class? A socio‐economic exploration of the Vietnamese middle‐income group

Abstract

By combining household survey data on the economic and social characteristics of middle‐income earners and primary survey data on their subjective perceptions, we show that the so‐called Vietnamese ‘middle class’ is strongly heterogeneous in terms of income, occupation and status and includes a large percentage of highly vulnerable households facing high individual risk not covered by social protection. Although marginally driven by public sector employment and formal private sector expansion, it shares common traits that might help consolidate class identification and could lead to more formally organised political influence if the political sphere becomes more open in the future.

Middle Class Vulnerability in China: Measurement and Determinants

“…The vulnerability of the middle-income class is a growing concern in today's world with the increase in middle-income countries. Recent empirical evidence from Latin America and North America has conclusively demonstrated that there are also large numbers of vulnerable people within the middle-income class, who are particularly vulnerable to economic insecurity, inadequate social safety nets, lack of access to resources, and even poverty (López-Calva and Ortiz-Juarez 2014; Stampini et al, 2016;Bilan et al, 2020;Rougier et al, 2021) [6,7,30,31]. Indeed, middle-income countries are vulnerable to a range of economic, social, and environmental risks, such as natural disasters, economic downturns, political instability, and inequality shocks, which are highly likely to have serious consequences for people's well-being and the world economic landscape.…”