Rise of the individual and the middle class

Description:

Advances in global education and technology have helped empower individuals like never before, leading to increased demands for transparency and participation in government and public decision-making. These changes will continue, and are ushering in a new era in human history in which more people will be middle class than poor.

Enablers:

• Demographic boom in developing regions
• Technological advances in agricultural productivity
• Access to information through mobile phones, internet penetration and social media
• Rising income inequality

Inhibitors:

• Economic depression
• Diminishing purchasing power/disposable income
• Pandemics
• Populism

Paradigms:

• Change begins and ends top-down
• The West will reign in relative and absolute numbers in market attractiveness

Experts:

• Homi Kharas, The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries, OECD Development Centre, Working Paper No. 285, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2010)
• Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985)
• John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 2013)
• Claudia Benshimol Severin et al., “Global Growth Compass: Locating Consumer-Industry Growth Opportunities in Emerging Markets,” McKinsey & Co. (2011)
• Mathew J. Burrows, Director, Strategic Foresight Initiative
• The Rise of the Individual: Nikhil Sehgal, Alejandro Rothschuh, (SMD, 3M)
• Marlon Graf, Jeremy Ghez, Dmitry Khodyakov, Ohid Yaqub (RAND Corporation)

Web Resources:

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/5-charts-which-show-what-is-happening-to-the-middle-class-around-the-world/
• https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/689afed1-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/689afed1-en
• https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/summer-2016/how-a-growing-global-middle-class-could-save-the-worlds-economy
• https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2014/02/future-state-2030-v3.pdf
• https://trendwatching.com/quarterly/2017-03/truthful-consumerism/empowerment/

Contributor:

Jose Luis