‘The COVID-19 pandemic has eroded living standards around the globe, shrinking the global middle class and swelling the number of people in poverty amid a historic collapse in economic activity.
‘Analysis from Pew Research Center found that the global economic recession brought on by the pandemic shrank the worldwide middle class by 54 million, and increased the number of people in poverty by 131 million.
‘The middle-class falloff was most evident in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, where the expansion seen over previous years came to a virtual halt. But it could have been worse: “The erosion in the middle class might have been deeper if not for the fact that China—which is home to more than one-third of the global middle class—evaded an economic contraction, even though growth there was slower than anticipated,” the Pew study said.’
Read here (Fortune, Mar 18, 2021)
