[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-112892-en":3,"doc-seo-112892-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},112892,1374391974564,"Clementine","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/14000253aa45c000a9e?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779874745381141002",8,"Research & Report","We Forgot the Middle Class! Inequality Underestimation in a Changing Sub-Saharan Africa","National middle-class formation and evolving consumption patterns in many Sub-Saharan African countries call for rethinking how welfare and inequality are measured. Relying only on consumption to proxy welfare can omit crucial information about the real welfare of the top 10–20% of the distribution often labeled as the “middle class” in these settings. The paper proposes a method that corrects the middle-class component of the consumption distribution using income-distribution information from the same surveys.","AUTHOR ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT  \nFINAL PUBLICATION INFORMATION  \nWe Forgot the Middle Class! Inequality Underestimation in a Changing Sub-Saharan Africa  \nThe definitive version of the text was subsequently published in  \nThe Journal of Economic Inequality,(forthcoming 2020), 2020-01-11  \nPublished by Springer Nature and found at [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8)  \nTHE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION OF THIS MANUSCRIPT IS AVAILABLE ON THE PUBLISHER’S PLATFORM  \nThis Author Accepted Manuscript is copyrighted by World Bank and published by Springer Nature. It is posted hereby agreement between them. Changes resulting from the publishing process—such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms—may not be reflected in this version of the text.  \nYou may download, copy, and distribute this Author Accepted Manuscript for noncommercial purposes. Your license is limited by the following restrictions:  \n(1) You may use this Author Accepted Manuscript for noncommercial purposes only under a CC BY-NC-ND  \n3.0 IGO license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo).  \n(2) The integrity of the work and identification of the author, copyright owner, and publisher must be preserved in any copy.  \n(3) You must attribute this Author Accepted Manuscript in the following format: This is an Author Accepted Manuscript by Clementi, F.; Dabalen, A.L.; Molini, V.; Schettino, F. We Forgot the Middle Class! Inequality Underestimation in a Changing Sub-Saharan Africa © World Bank, published in the The Journal of Economic Inequality(forthcoming 2020) 2020-01-11 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO [http://creativecommons.org/](http://creativecommons.org/)[ ](http://creativecommons.org/)licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09432-8)  \n© 2020 World Bank  \nWe forgot the middle class! Inequality underestimation in a  \nchanging Sub-Saharan Africa *  \nF. Clementia,†, A. L. Dabalenb, V. Molinib, and F. Schettinoc  \na University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy  \nb World Bank, Washington DC, USA  \nc University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy  \nAbstract  \nThe creation of national middle classes and the changes in consumption patterns in many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries suggest reconsidering the way welfare and consequently inequality is typically measured. Using only consumption to measure welfare can lead to an important loss of information regarding the real welfare of the top 10- 20 percent of the welfare distribution that is generally referred as “middle class” in these countries. This paper proposesa method capable of correcting the middle-class part of the consumption distribution using information coming from  \nthe income distribution of the same surveys. Results from 6 SSA countries indicate an increase of about 20 percent in the Gini index.  \nKeywords: middle class; inequality; Sub-Saharan Africa; consumption and income; combined distribution  \nJEL classification: C46; D31; D63  \n1 Introduction  \nThe two decades between 1995 and 2015 have represented for developing countries a period of fast growth and poverty reduction. Besides reducing poverty, global growth also had a profound impact on the social structure of many developing countries, buttressing the creation of a world  \n* The authors acknowledge financial support from the World Bank. We thank Federica Alfani (FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) for excellent assistance with data preparation. We also thank (in random order) Pierella Paci, Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Paolo Verme and Christoph Lakner for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Of course, we are the sole responsible for all possible errors the paper may contain.  \n† Corresponding author: [fabio.clementi@unimc.it](fabio.clementi@unimc.it).  \n“middle class 1”(Milanovic and Yitzhak","cbCairSbiC9VaIin","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCairSbiC9VaIin","pdf",1901174,1,43,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Middle-class concepts and measurement in Sub-Saharan Africa","[{\"question\":\"Why does the paper argue that welfare measurement should be reconsidered in Sub-Saharan Africa?\",\"answer\":\"Because changes in consumption patterns and the emergence of national middle classes suggest that standard welfare measurement approaches may not capture welfare accurately across the distribution.\"},{\"question\":\"What problem arises when welfare is measured using only consumption?\",\"answer\":\"It can lose important information about the real welfare of the top 10–20% of the welfare distribution, which is often treated as the “middle class” in these countries.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the proposed method improve the measurement of the middle-class part of welfare?\",\"answer\":\"It corrects the middle-class component of the consumption distribution by incorporating information from the income distribution of the same 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