Median Incomes and Middle Class in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan's per capita median income is $73.26 per month in terms of 2005 PPP (purchasing poverty parity) US dollars as of 2010. It is higher than India's $60.48 and Bangladesh's $51.67 per capita per month, according to the World Bank.

Source: World Bank

Median income is the amount that divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount. Mean income (average) is the amount obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a country by the number of people in that country.  A country's median income is a better indicator than the average income to gauge how a population is faring economically.

Median income also helps assess the size of the middle class in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh based on the definition used by Asian Development Bank and World Bank. Both of these institutions define middle class as those earning $2 or more per capita per day in terms of 2005 PPP US$.

Pakistan median income of $73.26 per month translates into $2.44 per day, higher than $2 per day income level used by ADB and WB to define middle class. It means that more than 50% of Pakistanis are in middle class. India's $60.48 per month puts 50% of Indians in middle class while Bangladesh's $51.67 means fewer than 50% of Bangladeshis are in middle class.

Source: Asian Development Bank 2010

A 2010 Asian Development Bank's report titled "Asia's Emerging Middle Class: Past,. Present, And Future" reported Pakistan's middle class size as 40.12%  of the country's population as of 2005.  It also estimated Bangladesh's middle class at 20.25% and India's at 25.05% of their total populations.

Source: Institute of Business Administration Karachi Pakistan

More recently, research conducted by Dr. Jawaid Abdul Ghani of Karachi School of Business and Leadership (KSBL) concluded that Pakistan's middle class rose to 55% of the country's population in 2010.

Even though Pakistan's GDP growth has been relatively low compared to India and Bangladesh in recent years, the country's middle class has continued to grow rapidly. It's explained as follows: It's not the overall GDP growth and average per capita income increases but the median per capita income growth that tells you how the GDP gains are shared among the population.

Data shows that economic gains in Pakistan are shared better than India and Bangladesh because of lower inequality. Income poverty rate (those below $1.25 per capita per day) in India is 33% and Bangladesh 43% versus 13% in Pakistan, according to WB data on povcalNet.  Gini Index for India is 33, Pakistan 29 and Bangladesh 32, indicating that Pakistan has lower inequality.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan's Middle Class Estimated at 55% of Population

Comparing Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2012

India-Pakistan Comparison in 2014

Pakistan's Official GDP Figures Ignore Booming FMCG Sector

Musharraf Accelerated Human and Economic Development in Pakistan

Pakistan's Growing Middle Class

Pakistan's GDP Grossly Under-estimated; Shares Highly Undervalued

Fast Moving Consumer Goods Sector in Pakistan

3G-4G Roll-out in Pakistan

 

Pakistan Government Deploys Mobile Apps

 

Telecom and Media Boom in Pakistan

 

Mobile Money Revolution in Pakistan

[Riaz Haq]

Population below $2 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $2.00 a day at 2005 international prices.

World Bank data on percent of population living on less than $2 a day per capita:

Bangladesh 2010 76.5%

India 2012 59.2%

Pakistan 2011 50.7%

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.2DAY

[Riaz Haq]

What Would Pakistan 2.0 Look Like?

Ravi Kumar 

Digital Strategist, World Bank Group

If you have ever doubted that the mother of invention is necessity, then look no further than Pakistan.

Pakistan has struggled to provide opportunities to its people for decades. But the country is turning the tide.

People in Pakistan are determined to define their destiny. They are using all of the resources at their disposal to tackle their challenges..

When Madeeha Hassan, a young entrepreneur from a small town found herself in Lahore, one of the largest Pakistani cities, she was a bit scared. She thought everyone was smarter than her. At times, she wanted to run back to her home town.

After completing her studies, she started to work as a user interface designer. Her office was far from where she lived. It was hard to find a reliable mode of transportation. So she and few of her friends, created Savaree, Pakistan's first ridesharing app. The app resolved her carpooling problems and those of many others too.

It's just not young people who are innovating. Public administrators are doing it too.

In 2011, dengue fever engulfed Pakistan and killing hundreds of people. By 2012, Pakistanis had created an app to ensure people were treated rapidly and resources to combat dengue were mobilized efficiently. In 2012, there were 80 times fewer cases of dengue fever in Lahore than in 2011.

In Pakistan, there has been remarkable progress in rebuilding trust between citizens and public administrators. Pakistan's Punjab Citizen Feedback Model is leveraging the power of mobile phones, SMS and personal phone calls.

Let's say, for example, you went to a government office in Punjab to register your property. An official "records your mobile number, along with other details of the transaction." This information is sent to "local call officers" and to a call center.

Later, a local officer will call you asking about your experience registering your property. And there are call centers that call thousands of people who use public services. As of April 2014, "more than 4 million citizens of Pakistan had been contacted" and asked about their experiences with "the departments of revenue, health, and education."

These responses are entered into the system to make public services better.

This progress comes in contrast with how Pakistan is viewed as a place of conflict. But as evidence shows, we are witnessing how public administrators and youth are taking steps towards realizing Pakistan 2.0: where people can fulfil their dreams and have the opportunity to reach their potential.

Technology is not only serving as a tool for the government to leapfrog the way it conducts its business, but, as you might have guessed, it's also helping youth become job creators and problem solvers.

In 2013, more than 70% of the population had mobile phones, most of them costing under $60.

​Today more than 60% of Pakistanis are under the age of 30. Unemployment, especially, among youth remains high. With no jobs, and lack of opportunities youth are taking it upon themselves to create opportunities, as Hassan did.

As administrators, and public, especially youth, commit to innovating and improving Pakistan, we are bound to see Pakistan 2.0 in the near future.

The digital youth summit happening in May in Peshawar, a diverse and dynamic city of Pakistan, is just one more step towards the quest to make Pakistan more prosperous and stable. At the summit, participants will focus on technology entrepreneurship, on-line work and 'tech for social' innovation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ravi-kumar/what-would-pakistan-20-lo_...

[Riaz Haq]

I did visit Pew Global and found a July 2015 report " A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality". 

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/07/Global-Middle-Class-Report_F...

It shows the following:

Population Below $2 a day India 19.8% in 2011 down from 35.4% in 2001 vs Pakistan 18.1% in 2011 down from 33.3% in 2001

Median Daily Per Capita Income India $2.96 in 2011 up from $2.39 in 2001 vs Pakistan $2.95 in 2011 up from $2.42 2001

While median daily per capita income is about the same, Pakistan still has lower $2 a day poverty level than India. 

Anyone above $2 a day is considered middle class by both ADB and World Bank definitions. 

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/07/Global-Middle-Class-Report_F...

[Riaz Haq]

The Median as a Better Measure of Development – and Better Than the World Bank’s Shared Prosperity
11/6/13Nancy Birdsall


In India, median consumption is $1.55 a day; that is associated with a $1.25 poverty rate of 33 percent.


Looking along the vertical axis at countries classified as low-income by the World Bank, median daily consumption per capita varies enormously: from $1.30 in Benin and Bangladesh to more than twice as much, i.e. at or close to $3 in Cameroon and Tajikistan.

Looking across the chart along the horizontal axis at about $1.50 daily median consumption per capita, the bubbles represent countries with a wide range of mean GNI or GNI per capita: Malawi, Ethiopia, and Guinea at less than $500; Pakistan, Senegal and Nigeria at about $1000; East Timor at almost $2,000 per capita; Swaziland at almost $3,000; and Angola at almost $4,000 (where the $1.25 poverty rate is 43 percent).

http://www.cgdev.org/blog/median-better-measure-development-%E2%80%...

[Riaz Haq]

Here are 2014 median income/consumption estimates of countries around the world released by he Centre for Global Development:

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2016/05/giving-and-global-ineq...


Pakistan: Median Income per capita: $1204.50, Median Household Income: $6,022.50 Mean (Average) per capita $4,811.31 

India Rural: Median per capita $930.75 Median Household $4,653.75 Mean (Average) per capita $5,700.72 

India Urban: Median per capita $1295.75 Median Household $6,478.75 Mean(Average) per capita: $5,700.72


http://www.cgdev.org/blog/world-bank-poverty-statistics-lack-median...

[Riaz Haq]

This Is Just How Unequal is #India with top 1% Owning 58% of Wealth. #Modi #BJP http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2017/01/17/this-is-just-how-uneq... … via @WSJIndia

The richest 1% of Indians hold 58% of the country’s total wealth, according to Oxfam India.

The stark inequality in India is worse than the global data put out by the organization, which show that the richest 1% have more than 50% of the total world wealth, Oxfam said.

The anti-poverty advocacy group released a report, “An Economy for the 99%” this week to coincide with the meeting of some of the world’s wealthiest business leaders and most powerful policymakers in Davos, Switzerland.

It said recently improved data on the distribution of wealth, particularly in countries like India and China, indicate that the poorest half of the world has less wealth was previously thought. Oxfam singled out India repeatedly in the report.

It said that companies are increasingly driven to pay higher returns to their shareholders. In India, the amount of profits corporations share with shareholders is as high as 50% and growing rapidly, the report said.

The report said the annual share dividends paid by from Zara’s parent company to Amancio Ortega – the world’s second richest man – are equal to around 800,000 times the annual wage of a worker employed by a garment factory in India.

Oxfam said that the combined wealth of India’s 57 billionaires is equivalent to that of the country’s poorest 70%.

“India is hitting the global headlines for many reasons, but one of them is for being one of the most unequal countries in the world with a very high and sharply rising concentration of income and wealth,” Nisha Agarwal, chief executive of Oxfam said in a statement.

Oxfam said India should introduce an inheritance tax and raise its wealth levies as well as increasing public spending on health and education. It said it should end the era of tax havens and crack down on rich people and corporations avoiding tax.

[Riaz Haq]

Per Capita Income in dollar terms has witnessed
a growth of 6.4 percent in FY 2017 as
compared to 1.1 percent last year. The per
capita income in dollar terms has increased
from $ 1,531 in FY 2016 to $ 1,629 in FY
2017. Main contributing factors for the rise in
per capita income are higher real GDP, growth,
low population growth and stability of Pak
Rupee. 


http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_17/overview_2016-17.pdf

[Riaz Haq]

#India’s Missing #MiddleClass : Multinational businesses relying on Indian consumers face disappointment. #China #Inequality

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21734382-multinational-busi... …


https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/951542797483499520

For all the talk of wanting to tap the middle class, no firm moving into India thinks it is targeting the middle of the income distribution. India’s mean GDP per head is just $1,700, and 80% of the population makes less than that. Adjust for purchasing-power parity by factoring in the cheaper cost of goods and services in India and you can bump the mean up to $6,600. But that is less than half the figure for China (see chart 2) and a quarter of that for Russia. What is more, foreign companies have to take their money out of India at market exchange rates, not adjusted ones.

Defining the middle class anywhere is tricky. India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research has used a cut-off of 250,000 rupees of annual income, or about $10 a day at market rates. Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel of the Paris School of Economics found in a recent study that one in ten Indian adults had an annual income of more than $3,150 in 2014. That leaves only 78m Indians making close to $10 a day.

Meagre market

Even adjusting for the lower cost of living, that is hardly a figure to set marketers’ heartbeats racing. The latest iPhone, which costs $1,400 in India, represents five month’s pay for an Indian who just makes it into the top 10% of earners. And such consumers are not making up through growing numbers what they lack in individual spending power. The proportion making around $10 a day hardly shifted between 2010 and 2016.

Another gauge is whether people can afford the more basic material goods they crave. For Indians, that typically means a car or scooter, a television, a computer, air conditioning and a fridge. A government survey in 2012 found that under 3% of all Indian households owned all five items. The median household had no more than one. How many of them will be anywhere near able to buy an iPhone or a pair of Levi’s if they cannot afford a TV set?

To get in the top 1% of earners, an Indian needs to make just over $20,000. Adjusted for purchasing-power parity, that is a comfortable income, equating to over $75,000 in America. But in terms of being able to afford goods sold at much the same price across the world, whether a Netflix subscription or Nike trainers, more than 99% of the Indian population are in the same league as Americans that count as below the poverty line (around $25,000 for a family of four), points out Rama Bijapurkar, a marketing consultant.

The top 1% of Indians, indeed, are squeezing out the rest. They earn 22% of the entire income pool, according to Mr Piketty, compared with 14% for China’s top 1%. That is largely because they have captured nearly a third of all national growth since 1980. In that period India is the country with the biggest gap between the growth of income for the top 1% and the growth of income for the population as a whole. At the turn of the century, the richest 10% of Indians made 40% of national income, about the same as the 40% below them. But far from becoming a middle class, the latter’s share of income then slumped to under 30%, while those at the top went on to control over half of all income (see chart 3).