Is there a middle class in most countries around the world?

Answer 1

In the vast majority of the world, there is an insignificant middle class of educators and business people. Generally, people who are in our upper-middle class (doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc.) are in the upper classes of other countries. And even then, they're a small minority. But, they hold nearly all the power.

Most of the world is, and has always been, divided between the rich and the poor. Things changed during the Industrial Revolution (starting in the mid-eighteenth century). In the United States, the middle class grew to very significant levels. But, now the lower portion of that class is disappearing.

Modern economists, like Robert Reich, and noted sociologists, like me, worry about the U.S.A. becoming a two-tiered society, one well educated and highly remunerated, the other poorly educated and desperately poor.

Something will have to replace manufacturing for the U.S. and western European countries to re-grow the middle class. Today, manufacturing jobs that use to pay well are outsourced to countries like China and African republics where labor is cheap. So far, not enough equally-paying jobs have replaced our factory jobs.

The service sector is now the largest employer of U.S. workers, but most jobs do not provide adequate wages, benefits, or retirement packages to allow people to lead middle-class life-styles.

In third-world countries, former farmers who now work in factories have a more dependable income, but it is so low that they are poor by any given standard.

Answer 2

If you're thinking a middle class like in the US, then you only find one in the US, Europe, and selected parts of the industrialized world. The middle class that exists in most other countries is very small and not particularly significant.

Answer 3

Not if defined monetarily. In the U.S. and Britain, about 20% actually earn middle class wages. But if you mean by education, life style, access to technologies, consumerism...yes. We achieve it through the evil of "credit!" By this definition it is amoral. It began at the start of the industrial revolution, really took hold after WWI and is beginning to die a natural death. But then so is the rest of society, as consumerism destroys itself. In India, China, and sub Saharan Africa, something akin to a middle-class, folks who drive to work, take vacations abroad, having purchasing power, and education, in the European sense of knowing the things that don't sanctify life but make it easier and blander, has emerged and is expanding. And contracting. Simultaneously. It makes for a fascinatingly unstable world imploding on itself as I write.

Answer 4

There is always middle class or there would not be rich class or poor. Middle class differs by different cultures and countries depending on their culture.

Answer 5

yes....not where capitalism is dominant

Answer 6

probly not