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Resources on the middle class

Inclusive Economy21 Apr 2015The Broker

The international discussion on the middle class is taking place on many levels. The table here contains a number of institutional reports, research papers and other sources that The Broker’s editors have found useful in preparing the Middle Class Dossier. We hope that this overview can help you dig deeper into the subject. The list is divided in five categories: 1) Primary data, 2) Reports of international organizations, institutional, and private sector, 3) Articles of experts on popular media, 4) Scholarly articles and white papers, and 5) Articles and dossiers published by (multi)media.

I. Primary data on middle class development

Title	Author/Institution	Year of Publication
National Working Conditions Survey	TNO / CBS	2013
Arbeidsmarkt Prognose 2014 – 2015 [Dutch]	UVW	May 2014
PovCal Net online poverty analysis tool	World Bank	2013
Luxembourg Income Study LIS Data on “Inequality and Poverty”	Cross-National Data Center Luxembourg	2014
Panel Study of Income Dynamics PSID	University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research	2014
World Bank Categorization Country & Lending Groups	World Bank	2014
Income Inequality Statistics	Eurostat	July 2014

II. Reports of international organizations, institutions, and private sector on middle classes

Title	Author/Institution	Year of Publication
The Impending Collapse of the European Urban Middle Class: The European Union’s Denaturing of Space and Place	Guy Lanoue, Vincent Mirza, Jorge Pantaleon	2011
Eurofound yearbook 2013: Living and working in Europe	Eurofound	2013
Arm, ärmer, am ärmsten Menschen mit niedrigem Einkommen steigen immer häufiger ab [German]	Jan Paul Heisig & Martin Ehlert [German Development Institute]	2011
The Middle Class in Europe: Evidence from the LIS Data	Régis Bigot, Patricia Croutte & Jörg Muller (Crédoc), Guillaume Osier [STATEC & LIS]	2012
Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth	OECD	2014
Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising	OECD	2011
The Developing World’s Bulging (But Vulnerable) Middle Class	Martin Ravallion [World Bank]	2009
In Search of the Global Middle Class. A New Index	Urid Dadush & Shimelse Ali [Carnegie Foundation]	2012
Drivers of recent job polarisation and upgrading in Europe – European Jobs Monitor 2014	Enrique Fernández-Macías & John Hurley [Eurofound]	2014
On the Identification of the Middle Class	Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini [ECINE, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality]	2011
Europe’s Societal Challenges: An analysis of global societal trends to 2030 and their impact on the EU	Stijn Hoorens et al. [RAND CorporationEurope]	2013
Capturing the world’s emerging middle class	David Court & Laxman Narasimhan [McKinsey Quarterly]	2010
The making of the middle class in Africa	Mthuli Ncube & Abebe Shimeles [African Development Bank]	2012
Social Justice in the EU – A Cross-National Comparison	Social Inclusion Monitor Europe (SIM), Index Report	2014
A Vulnerability Approach to the Definition of the Middle Class	Louis F. Lopez-Calva & Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez [The World Bank]	2011
White Working Class Communities in Amsterdam	Saskia Welschen [Open Society Foundation]	July 2014
On Social Class, Anno 2014	Mike Savage, Fiona Devine, Niall Cunningham, et al	2014
The Dutch labour market during the Great Recession	CBP Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis	June 2014
A Dozen Facts about America’s Struggling Lower-Middle-Class	Melissa Kearney, Benjamin Harris, Elisa Jácome, and Lucie Parker [Brookings]	December 2013
Digital life in 2025. AI, Robotics and the Future of Jobs	Aaron Smith, Janna Anderson [Pew Research Center]	August 2014
Allianz Global Wealth Report 2014	Kathrin Brandmeir, Dr. Michaela Grimm, Dr. Michael Heise, Dr. Arne Holzhausen [Allianz Group]	2014
From the Bottom of the Pyramid to Emerging Middle Classes in Latin America	Sarah Boumphrey [Euromonitor International]	2014
What Opportunities Does Africa’s Rising Middle Class Present?	An Hodgson [Euromonitor International]	February 2013
Consumer Aspirations Study of 5,000 emerging affluent and affluent consumers across Indonesia, India, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya [powerpoint]	Standard Chartered	June 2014
The Lost Decade of the Middle Class . Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier	Pew Social Research	August 12, 2012
Asian Affluence: The Emerging 21st Century Middle Class	Morgan Stanley Africa	June 2011
Emerging middle class in “fast-track” mode	BBVA, Economic Watch	2013
An Emerging Middle Class	Mario Pezzini [OECD Observer, OECD Development Center]	2012
EU Employment and Social Situation	European Commission, Social Europe Quarterly Review, Publications Office of the European Union	September 2014
Is Europe Losing Its Soul? The European Social Model in Times of Crisis	Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead [ILO]	January 2015
Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: in History and Now	Branko Milanovic [World Bank]	2012
Household Debt Advisory Services in the European Union	Eurofound	2012
Think differently. Humanitarian Impacts of the Economic Crisis in Europe	International Federation of the Red Cross	2013
Quality of Life in Europe: Impacts of the Crisis	Robert Anderson, Hans Dubois, Tadas Leoncikas, Eszter Sandor [Eurofound]	2012
The European Social Model in times of Economic Crisis and Austerity Policies. Portugal	Pilar González, António Figueiredo [ILO presentation]	2014
From Public Sector Worker in Portugal to Cleaner in Switzerland	ILO, Feature Report European Labour Migration	September 20, 2012
Riders on the Storm. Britain’s Middle Income Household since 2007	Nida Broughton, Onyinye Ezeyi, Claudia Hupkau [Social Market Foundation]	April 7, 2014
The Low-Wage Recovery: Industry Employment and Wages Four Years into the Recovery	National Employment Law Project	April 2014
Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class	Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Julian Messina, Jamele Rigolini et al. [The World Bank]	2013
Making progressive policy works	Policy Network	April 2014

III. Articles of experts on popular media

Title	Author/Institution	Year of Publication
Middle Class Stagnation	Susan E. Mayer [Boston Review]	2012
Who Is Middle Class?	Joshua Keating [Slate]	June 2014
A slippery ladder: 2.8bn people on the brink	Shawn Donnan, Ben Bland and John Burn-Murdoch [The Financial Times]	April 2014
Even Sweatshops are Getting Automated. So What’s Left?	Andre McAfee”s Blog: The Business Impact of IT	May 2014
How unequal are the Netherlands? [in Dutch]	Monique Kremer, M. Bovens, E. Schrijvers en R. Went [WWR Verkenning]	2014
Is the British Middle Class an Endangered Species?	Andy Beckett [The Guardian]	2010
Wealth without workers, workers without wealth	The Economist	October 4th, 2014
Two numbers that show how badly America’s middle class is hurting	VoxEU	August 25, 2014
The Global Middle Class is Bigger Than We Thought	Ali Shimelse, Dadush Uri [Foreign Policy]	May 16, 2012
Winners of Globalization: The Rich and The Chinese Middle Class. Losers: The American Middle Class	Branko Milanovic [Huffington Post]	November 2014
How Did Canada’s Middle Class Get So Rich?	Derek Thompson [The Atlantic]	April 2014
The Rise of the Global Middle Class	Linda Yueh [BBC]	June 18, 2013
The Great Recession and the Middle Class. Four Experts Debate What’s Next for America	The Atlantic	August 2011
Maechtige Oligarchen, arme Mittelschicht [German]	Deutsche Welle	January 17, 2013
The Middle Class is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World.	Nelson D. Schwartz [The New York Times]	February 2, 2014
Developing world’s middle class is growing – but so is its ‘near poor’	Nick Mead [The Guardian]	30 January, 2013
More Redistribution, Less Income	Wall Street Journal	Nov 23, 2014
The Great Middle Class Identity Crisis	Simon Kuper [Financial Times]	November 8, 2013
The Recession Blew A Hole in Middle-Class Jobs	Bryce Covert [Think Progress]	May 26, 2014
One in Four American Workers Will Be In Low-Wage Jobs for the Next Decade	Travis Waldron [Think Progress]	August 2, 2012

IV. Scholary articles, Monographs & White Papers

Title	Author/Institution	Year of Publication
Trade, Education, and the Shrinking Middle Class	CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) (Emily Blanchard, Gerald Willmann)	2013
What is Middle Class About the Middle Class Around the World	Journal of Economic Perspectives (Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo)	2008
The Strugglers: The New Poor in Latin America	Nancy Birdsall, Nora Lustig, Christian J. Meyer [Center for Global Development]	2013
Job Polarization During the Great Recession and Beyond	KU Leuven (Maarten Goos, Anna Salomons & Marieke Vandeweyer)	2013
The middle class in contemporary South Africa: Comparing rival approaches	Ronelle Burger, Cindy Lee Steenekamp, Servaas van der Berg, Asmus Zoch	2014
The Political and Social Implications of the ‘New Middle Class’ in Developing Countries: A Literature Review and Avenues for Future Research	Borge Wietzke & Andy Sumner	2014, May
How Growing Inequality Hurts the Middle Class	Robert H Frank	2007
The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization?	Carl Benedikt Frey, Michael A. Osborne	2013, September
The Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development	William Easterly [World Bank]	2001
The New Global Middle Class: A Cross-Over from West to East	Homi Kharas & Geoffrey Gertz [Brookings]	2010
Growth and the Middle Class	David Madland [Democracy Journal]	Spring 2011
Globalization’s Missing Middle	Geoffrey Garret [Foreign Affairs]	Nov / Dec 2004
Indonesia’s Rising Middle Class to Transform the Country’s Consumer Market	Euromonitor International	July 2012
Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries [google preview]	Janet Gornick & Markus Jaentii	2013
The Icelandic Way Out of the Crisis. Welfarism, Redistribution and Austerity	Stefán Ólafsson [Social Research Centre, University of Iceland]	2012
The Political and Social Implications of the New Middle Classes in Developing Countries: A Literature Review and Avenues for Future Research	Borge Witzke, Andy Sumner	2014
Social Class. The Role of Class in Shaping Social Attitudes	Anthony Heath, Mike Savage, Nicki Senior [National Center for Social Research ]	2013

V. (Multi)media and popular dossiers

Title	Author/Institution	Year of Publication
The Fragile Middle	The Financial Times	2014
Inequality in Europe	Open Society Foundation	2014
Staat de middenklasse onder druk? [powerpoint]	Amsterdams Instituut voor ArbeidsStudies (AIAS), De Burcht (Centrum voor Arbeidsverhoudingen)	2013
The key to growth? Race with the machines	Erik Brynjolfsson (MIT), TEDx Talk	February 2013
The Global Middle Class revolution	BBC	2013
Wij en de robots (in die volgorde) [Dutch]	RTLZ	2014
Waarschuwing muiterij middenklasse geen loze kreet [Dutch]	CDA website	2014
De middenklasse kaalgeplukt [Dutch]	Schuttelaar & Partners	2013
Middenklasse brokkelt af [Dutch] Er zijn geen nieuwe banen voor de middenklasse [Dutch]	Trouw	2014
Arbeidsmarkt veranderd, middenklasse verdwijnt [Dutch]	P&O actueel	2014
Verzwakking middenklasse bedreiging voor welvaart [Dutch]	ABN Amro	2014
Meer groei, minder middenklasse? [Dutch]	The Boston Consulting Group	2014
De automatisering bedreigt de hele middenklasse [Dutch]	De Volkskrant	2014
Meldpunt [Dutch]	KRO	2014
Politiek onderschat problemen middenklasse [Dutch]	Financieele Dagblad	2014
De race tegen de machine [Dutch]	De Correspondent	2014
Vakbond De Unie bezorgd over middenklasse[Dutch]	Nederlands Dagblad	2014
Vermogenswinstbelasting treft vooral middenklasse [Dutch]	Shares Expertise	2014
Middle Class dossier BBC Can China save America’s middle class? The new middle class revolution: facts & figures The evolution of the middle class	BBC	2013, 2014
How to rescure UK middle classes Americans wealth shrinks middle class falling home prices Middle class young ‘will fare worse than their parents’ The American dream is now just that for it’s middle classes – a dream Technology didn’t kill middle class jobs, public policy did Who exactlyare Ed Miliband’s squeezed middle class? Middle class voters ‘more leftwing’ than the working class Now it’s the middle class’s turn to feel the employment earthquake Obama’s ‘middle class economics’ is proof he has no more campaings to run The awful truth: education won’t stop the west getting poorer	The Guardian	2013, 2014
Middle Class Series	Center for American Progress	2012
The Middle-out moment	Democracy journal	2013
Progressive Pro-Growth Principles for Trade and Competitiveness	Center for American Progress	2014
What the Middle Class doesn’t understand from Rich People	Business insider	2014