For 2030, half of the population of the whole world will belong to the middle class

In Spain, the apartment, six hundred and the TV set were the clearest signs of the heyday of the middle class in the middle of the sixties. A tendency that was hastening up to reaching 58 % of the population in the seventy and eighties. Now, the disparities have increased for the ends. The mileuristas and the increases of the mortgages have impoverished to the majority of the population and, at the same time, the number of rich is multiplied by three.

It is a common tendency in the most developed countries. Nevertheless, on a global scale everything opposite happens: the differences diminish. To a "dramatic" rhythm from the year 2000, makes sure the economist Xavier Sala i Martín in an article published in 2006 in Quarterly Journal of Economics (quarterly magazine on economy).

Every time there are more people who can be considered to be a middle class in the world, and the experts foresee that this tendency hastens up to levels not seen from the industrial revolution of the XIXth century. His consequences at political, economic, social and environmental level are indisputable.

According to a report of Goldman Sachs, 2.000 million persons will join up to the year 2030 what it is possible to consider to be a global middle class. That will suppose almost 50 % of the population of the whole world, what supposes a change without precedents in the distribution of the income and of the purchasing power as we know it till now. For 2050, 60 % of the world GDP will depend on the middle classes.

Since it was necessary to wait, China and India are the Home promoters of this process. In 1990, only 1 % of the Chinese population could be considered to be a middle class. Today he already supposes 35 % of his 1.300 million inhabitants, and they will represent just the double, 70 %, in 2020. But it is not anything exclusive of this potency. In 12 years, one of the three new members from the middle class will come of out of China or India, but, undoubtedly, Asia will redeem a decisive role in these demographic changes, although till now Latin America and the East Europe have taken the leadership.

It is clearly that the revenue that is assigned to this middle class is not the one that we understand in the developed country. The study places the revenue of the global middle class between the 3.750 and 18.780 euros per year (between 6.000 and 30.000 dollars, measured in purchasing power parity) opposite to the Spanish parameters, which they place in this segment of the population to those who enter between 20.000 and 60.000 euros a year.

The consequences will not make be waited. Someone, undoubtedly, much prints as the reduction of the poverty. The number of persons with income lower than 1.000 dollars than the year, through which they live with less than three dollars a day, will go on from 17 % registered in the year 2000 to 6 % in the year 2015. The changes related to the habits of consumption will produce an increase of the demand of more sophisticated products - like the technology - and of major quality - like the meat-. An increasing pressure will take place then for the resources, with special incidence in the related ones to the fuels, the food and the water. This competition will exercise strong pressures on the environment, although the experts also believe that the environmental conscience will increase. And the pressures to achieve political and social changes in the systems less participativos can complicate the life of many leaders. This way it happened also at the end of the XIXth century.

The change in the global economic balances has already begun taking place. In 1980, the seven biggest economies of the world belonged in its entirety to the developed world. In these moments, this list already places China like the fourth world economy, ahead of countries like the United Kingdom and France. For 2050 it will be China who heads the classification, India will occupy the third place, Brazil the quarter and Russia the fifth one. The United Kingdom does not appear in the list up to the position number eight, Japan does it in tenth place and Germany the first - current world exporter - remains relegated to the position number 12.

More dramatic arts, if he loves, are the consequences for Spain. When the Governments of last years have been caressing the idea of joining the club of the rich countries, the G-8, cleaning Italy out for revenue level, his sleep disappears before beginning taking form. For 2050, Spain does not even appear between the 25 biggest economies of the world, group that yes it will include to countries that now seem so poor to us as Vietnam, Turkey or Mexico. It is the cost of the globalization....

A cost that we have already begun noticing also in the pocket. Although there is no only cause that explains the strong increase of the prices of the food in last two years, the increase of the demand of emergent countries acts undoubtedly like a strong promoter of the increase, and the same happens with the oil. Diverse analysts tell that there are structural changes that have come to remain and that will prevent the prices from going down again at the levels which we have enjoyed in the last decade.

As Moisés Naim assures, "our adaptation to a world with a middle class more numerous that does never begin newly".