Size of middle class in India now nearly half of the country’s total population
The new middle class – persons spending anywhere between $2 and $10 per capita per day – has doubled in size to 600 million people between 2004 and 2012, a study by two Mumbai university economists has found. That’s nearly half of India’s population of 1.2 billion. This segment is typically split into two: the lower middle class and the upper middle class. The first spends between $4 and $6 per capita per day and the second between $6 and $10. The doubling in its size is mostly due to new entrants in the lower middle class category across rural and urban areas, Mumbai University’s Neeraj Hatekar and Sandhya Krishnan wrote in a recent working paper. Quartz India
