Spectating Metamorphosis: A global demographic shift towards future.

The Growth of the World’s Middle Class May Be the Greatest Story of Our Age Read the news and you can see that the world has entered into a trashcan — and fast! Terrorism, nuclear weapons, economic stagnation, social unrest, autocratic leaders, structural unemployment, deskilling, growing hopelessness, natural disasters, increasing inequality, xenophobia, #metoo, economic migrations, recessions, financial bubbles and crashes — the list goes on. Its a cacophony of angst,outrage, and political anger. Recently the Washington post reported that people around the world are joining the middle class on a scale hitherto undreamed of ( to borrow a phase from Dr. Strange).
In a powerful study entitled “The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it” by Max Roser, an economist at the University of Oxford and the founder of Our World in Data, we learn that on virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being — poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education — the world is an extraordinarily better place than it was just a couple of centuries ago.
“By 2020, more than half of the world’s population will be middle class”,the post reports. The surge, driven largely by a middle-class explosion in India and China that is now spreading to Southeast Asia, is perhaps the most incredible demographic shift ever witnessed. It’s easy to forget that the middle class barely existed for most of modern history. There was almost no middle class before the Industrial Revolution began in the 1830s,” Kharas notes. “It was just royalty and peasants. Now we are about to have a majority middle-class world.” Reaching the middle class is trans-formative as a life experience. There may be very few differences between being wealthy and being middle-class, but the quality of life between poverty and middle-class is stark. From a global perspective we view it as an access to basic essentials: transportation, air conditioning,electricity in their homes, store purchased hygienic items, food and running water. Two hundred years ago, only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living, while the vast majority of people lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today. Because of industrialization and increased productivity made it possible to lift steadily more people out of extreme poverty. At first, the progress was steady: in 1950 75% of the world were still living in extreme poverty. But today, those living in extreme poverty are now less than 10%. Massive gains have been made in reducing extreme poverty, particularly in the last 50 years. Some countries that are now rich were poor just a few decades ago. Every single day since 1990, since, on average, there were 130,000 people fewer in extreme poverty every day. This is an extraordinary achievement, particularly because the world population has increased seven-fold over the last two centuries. Vital goods and services became less scarce: more food, better clothing, better housing and indoor plumbing. The education story is equally encouraging. Data shows that the share of the world population that is literate over the last 2 centuries has gone from a tiny elite to a world where 8 out of 10 people can read and write. Progress in health is equally astonishing. A key reason for your surprise? We don’t know how bad things used to be. In 1800, more than 40% of the world’s newborns died before the age of five. Now infant mortality rate has reduced because of modern medicine and the discovery of germs, but even more importantly there are improvements in housing, sanitation, and diet. Today, the middle class totals about 3.7 billion people, Kharas says, or 48 percent of the world’s population. An additional 190 million (2.5 percent) comprise the mega-rich. Together, the two groups make up a majority of humanity in 2018, a shift with wide-reaching consequences for the global economy — and potential implications for the happiness of millions of people. It’s ironic that in a world where knowledge and education are improving drastically, there is a widespread ignorance about the improving state of the world.
“More than 9 out of 10 people do not think that the world is getting better.”
The revelation that the middle class has grown globally at an alarming rate is a wonderful news to be welcomed with open arms. With every steps, we are shifting towards an open minded future.