Abstract
Middle class studies have gained relevance in the economic literature. Nevertheless, a profound lack of agreement on conceptual and methodological issues for its identification remains. Furthermore, it has mostly relied on only one dimension: income. In this paper we present a new multidimensional approach for identifying the middle class based on multivariate quantiles. Moreover, this approach allows for a more general assessment of welfare given that it allows for identifying other groups -the poor and the upper class- overcoming existing strategies. We provide an empirical application for the case of Argentina in the 2004-2014 period.
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Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), Grant CTM2016-79741-R for MICROAIPOLAR project and by Grant pict 2018-00740 from anpcyt (M. Svarc). We thank Leonardo Gasparini, participants of the VIII ECINEQ Meeting as well as the editor and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. All errors and omissions are our sole responsibility.
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Edo, M., Escudero, W.S. & Svarc, M. A multidimensional approach to measuring the middle class. J Econ Inequal 19, 139–162 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-020-09464-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-020-09464-5