The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACT The Making of Middle Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS DataThis paper presents evidence on the making of the middle class in Africa by exploiting a comparable micro data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for thirty-seven countries over two decades consisting of over seven hundred thousand household histories. We constructed a pseudo-panel to examine the dynamics of middle class in blocks of four periods covering the period 1990-2011. A key finding is that there was significant mobility of the middle class to the upper class in the last two decades with very few slipping back to poverty with obvious difference across countries. The paper approached the making of a middle class in Africa from institutional and policy perspectives. Initial conditions such as level of development in early decades, quality of institutions and most of all ethnic fractionalization play a significant role in determining the growth of the middle class in recent years. In addition we found evidence suggesting that the size of the middle class is higher in countries where mutual trust among citizens tends to be stronger. The role of education feature prominently in the making of the middle class. In about 30 of the 83 country-level regression decompositions we conducted for the asset index, the contribution of education exceeded 25% in explaining the overall variance in the asset index. The 'premium' (or 'return') individuals obtain from achieving primary, secondary and tertiary level of education is unambiguously high compared with no education, but the effect decreases as the mean level of schooling increases.JEL Classification: D31, J15

Matching Concepts With Measurement: Who Belongs to Africa's Middle Class?

“…Burger and McAravey () begin to combine these sociological approaches with the asset‐based method used by Shimeles and Ncube (). Focusing again on South Africa and drawing on Sen's () theory of capabilities, they propose that instead of looking at the middle class per se, the more accurate distinction is between the empowered and the disempowered.…”

“…'s () view that the middle classes are those who are not vulnerable to falling into poverty with Burger and McAravey's () notion of being ‘empowered.’ Certainly, a more expansive set of conditions correlates with these factors, but they are not necessary in and of themselves. For example, Shimeles and Ncube () also include possession of durable goods, such as a car. But, this may reflect consumption preferences rather than class position per se and begins to undermine broader comparability.…”

“…Based on various data sources, he finds that the share of black South Africans in all four categories has expanded since the end of apartheid in 1994, with much of this growth aided by equity policies. Burger and McAravey (2014) begin to combine these sociological approaches with the asset-based method used by Shimeles and Ncube (2014). Focusing again on South Africa and drawing on Sen's (1989) theory of capabilities, they propose that instead of looking at the middle class per se, the more accurate distinction is between the empowered and the disempowered.…”

Understanding Sub-Saharan Africa's Extreme Poverty Tragedy

“…The start-year is consistent with a recent phase of a rising African middle class (Shimeles & Ncube, 2015), while the end year is due to constraints in data availability. The inclusive development dependent variables is the inequality adjusted human development index (IHDI).…”

“…More specific contemporary middle class African development literature has focused on four main themes, namely, the: measurement of the middle class (Resnick, 2015a(Resnick, , 2015bCheeseman, 2015;Mattes, 2015;Shimeles & Ncube, 2015;Tschirley et al, 2015;Thurlow et al, 2015); relationship between the middle class and economic growth (Tschirley et al, 2015;Handley, 2015); nexus between governance and the middle class (Mattes, 2015;Cheeseman, 2015;Resnick, 2015b) and the role of the middle class in debates between the relevance of the Washington Consensus (WC) versus the Beijing Model (BM) in African development Asongu, 2016b).…”