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Matching Concepts With Measurement: Who Belongs to Africa's Middle Class?
Author(s) -
Thurlow James,
Resnick Danielle,
Ubogu Dumebi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3105
Subject(s) - conceptualization , middle class , vulnerability (computing) , matching (statistics) , class (philosophy) , social class , social security , sociology , economic growth , development economics , economics , computer science , mathematics , statistics , computer security , artificial intelligence , market economy
This paper advocates for a conceptualization of the African middle class that would be universally valid: security from economic vulnerability and prospects for social mobility. We suggest three minimum criteria that are jointly necessary and sufficient to reflect this conceptualization: secondary schooling completion, decent housing amenities and skilled employment. Using household surveys for nine African countries, we then demonstrate how measures of the middle class based on expenditure thresholds refer to households with vastly different abilities to meet these three criteria. This cautions against overreliance on expenditure‐based definitions, which may obscure qualitative differences among the middle class across African countries. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.