Column 142

Who will rule globalizations middle class?

This week's Economist features a special report on the "burgeoning bourgeoisie," referring to the emerging global middle class that now encompasses -- by generous estimate -- roughly half the world and is centered in the emerging markets of the East and South. Arriving amidst the first truly global recession of this now truly globalized economy, such mainstream media attention could not be timelier.

Roughly a century ago, the middle class was rapidly expanding in numerous Western nations, a great number of which were engaged in consolidating colonial empires around the planet. Now, those former colonies provide much of that emerging global middle class.

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Read on at Scripps Howard.