Developing countries have both a growing economy and a growing consuming population, while developed countries are mostly replacement economies.
Developing economies and emerging markets are expected to continue growing relatively fast, given their increasing labour force and expanding markets potential, versus the advanced economies, which are mostly replacement markets.
- Of today's global middle class, 25% lives in advanced economy countries, some 40% lives in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, while the rest lives in other developing nations.
| Related megatrends:Geopower; Urbanisation - The middle class of the BRIC countries grew from half of that of the G-7 in 2000 to double of that of the G-7 today, and continues to expand rapidly.
| Related megatrends: Geopower; Inequalities - By 2030, Asia might represent 66% of the world middle class population.
- China is already the second largest middle class in absolute terms, at 157 million consumers (the top largest is the USA) and is expected to grow further. | Related Megatrends: Geopower; Demography
- By 2030, over 70% of China’s population could be middle class, consuming nearly $10 trillion in goods and services and India could be the world’s largest middle class consumer market, surpassing both China and the USA.
| Related Megatrends: Geopower; Inequalities; Urbanisation - By 2020, the middle class in each, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Indonesia, and, a few years later, Egypt, Nigeria, and Vietnam could be over 100 million people. The Philippines and Thailand could have middle classes as large as in the United Kingdom, France, or Italy. | Related Megatrends: Geopower; Demography
- In fast-growing emerging and developing countries, middle-class spending rose by over 10% per year in the 1990s and 12.5% annually between 2005 and 2015.
- The middle-class market in advanced economies is projected to grow at only 0.5%-1% per year, while the dynamic middle-class market in emerging economies could register annual growth rates of 6% or more.
| Related megatrends:Geopower; Urbanisation; Inequalities - The SDG Index and Dashboards Report 2017 shows that OECD countries face major challenges in meeting several SDGs, mostly on sustainable consumption and production (SDG12), climate change (SDG13), clean energy (SDG7), and ecosystem conservation (SDGs14 and 15); data on each spillover indicator show that high-income countries tend to generate negative SDG spillover effects for poorer developing countries (countries with larger spillover: Switzerland, Singapore, Luxemburg, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, USA, Belgium, UK.) | Related Megatrends: Natural resources; Inequalities; Climate and environment