December 22, 2011

A global middle class world with a lot less extreme poverty in the 2020s


The World Bank has a different view, which likely has statistical errors which cause them to overestimate the poverty. Repeat - I believe the World Bank poverty numbers are too high.

Irregardless the trends are matching and by 2020, so long as India, China and Asia do not have sudden and massive economic underperformance there should be very few people living on less than $1.25/day in Asia. This would leave about 350 million people living with less than $1.25/day mainly in Africa. Nigeria is actually doing pretty well economically and is expected to account for 90-100 million of the extremely poor in 2015. If Nigeria continues to do well then they could make a lot of progress against poverty by 2020. A reachable positive scenario is to have less than 200 million living with less than $1.25/day.


PPP $5/day and $10/day standards

$10 to 100/day has been used to define global middle class. Below is an example of rising wealth curves in China with $2/day, $5/day and $10/day cutoffs.

The $2/day, $5/day and $10/day standards will be tough to address without dealing with the literacy problems and without large scale programs for addressing development in India and Africa.

All emerging country urbanization and development are not equal. China's new cities with high rises, offices and factories and suburbs are not the same as urbanization with a lot of slums and shanty buildings.

China will be able to help the nations that follow with energy efficient, prefabricated high rises (from Broad Group) and exporting low cost nuclear reactors This will help address the quality of emerging country cities and infrastructure. However, India and Africa will have to get serious about anti-poverty, illiteracy and raising the bottom 40%.

What will a mostly middle class and urban world need ?

There will need to be a lot more clean power generation built.

There will need to be 2 to 2.5 times the power generation by 2030 to support the rising wealth. This would be an increase from 18 Terawatts to 40 to 50 Terawatts in 2030

Choices will be made to enable the rise of the global middle class and the escape of billions from poverty. Those who are expecting only solar and wind to be used will be disappointed. Expansion of solar and wind power will occur but the demands for energy will need nuclear and any new innovative energy technology that emerges.

Current world energy consumption statistics are at wikipedia.

The mineral resources will be available but some environmentalists will not like the solutions that will be used to obtain the needed minerals. Resources will be obtained from the ocean and the ocean floor and from innovation extraction of resources on land.

Food production will need to be expanded.


There will be continued expansion of fish farming and genetic engineering of crops and animals.


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