Middle Class Trajectories

Organization: Graduate Program on International Affairs
Team: Ranjit Jose, Alison Hayes, Andrea Peters
Supervisor: Mark Johnson
Semester: Spring 2007

It has been widely documented that since the 1980s income disparities both within and across countries have widened. This has resulted, for example, in economic growth not being able to deliver the promised reduction in income poverty in many developing countries. However, this increased disparity is not unique to developing countries. On the contrary, it is also present in many developed ones, in particular in the United States.

There are various implications of this increased inequality. For instance, some authors have stressed the importance of a more equal distribution of income favoring economic growth while others have emphasized increased dynamism of the economy. This project will explore these and other implications of increasing inequality. In particular it will dwell on both economic and social/cultural impacts.
This will be accomplished by reviewing and integrating different literatures in order to obtain a richer and fuller picture of the main impacts. The research will be focused on a comparison of three to five countries. They will be determined depending on the characteristics of the underlying processes and the potential lessons to be learned from a comparative analysis.

Core Documents


Terms of Reference
Timeline
Final Presentation

Additional Documents


2007 Spring - GPIA - Middle Class Trajectories.pdf


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