Have you wondered what the issue of the middle class is in general on the globe? Which are those countries with the largest middle class population, and which are those with largest percentage of middle class population?

Let’s first see what middle class is considered to be before we proceed onto these issues:

According to CNN Money, the middle class is characterized by their place in five categories: income, wealth, consumption, aspiration, and demographics. By the income middle class represents the population whose income is in between that 20% of the poorest and 20% of the richest people. Since wealth does not have to be proportional to the income (having in mind savings for example), some characterize middle class being 3/5 of the country’s wealth. Consumption is one of the categories that might show better the position of an individual than income by the amount of spending. Then we have the aspiration, rather a non-directly measurable category, but showing the personal tendencies and possibilities through showing off the socio-economic status. And finally, there is a demographic category takes into account education, age, race together with income as wealth indicators.

So even though there is no strict definition of a middle class, it is one measurable variable which is used in order to check the differences and distribution of wealth and income in one country. So, the larger the middle class is (by percentage of population), the less prominent are differences in between people.

Asian developing countries are countries which are in the state of hyper growth of the middle classes. But nevertheless, even the numbers are as high as hundreds of millions this is still not the majority of these countries’ population by percentage. On the other hand Western countries are going through slight middle class shrinkage lately. To see more info on this we recommend you to check out Top 15 Countries with the Largest Middle Class Population in the World.