Vinod2070
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flitting from topic to topic like a little ferret now are we ??
Thought we were commenting on the manufactured component of exports What happened there? Do you concede that India in real per capita terms exports 13% more manufactured goods than Pakistan ?
Pakistan has no real middle class to speak of.
This is a country where a former army chief and dictator president runs from the court in full view of the Police, after being ordered to be arrested!
In this context, it is useful to look at other indicators. In 2007, Pakistan had 1.44 million passenger cars and 2.7 million motorcycles in use. Even if we assume all those had a motorcycle belonged to a middle class household and assuming 6 members per family, the number of people belonging to the middle class households would not have exceeded 25 million in 2007. While it is true that the production of motorcycles has touched 1 million mark in Pakistan it is the actual total usage (because old motorcycles are discarded) that is relevant for the discussion of size of the middle class notwithstanding the fact that both the public sector departments (e.g. police, militias) and private sector businesses (banks, courier and private security companies, etc.) buy motorcycles and those sales are not part of family or consumer expenditure. The same observation applies to passenger cars with current annual sales figure of 160,000 units. India whose population is 6.7 times larger than that of Pakistan sells more than 12 times the number of passenger cars sold in Pakistan. It is a moot point whether Pakistans middle class too, like India, accounts for 40% or so of its population.
There is another indicator for the size of the middle class; female literacy in the youth. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 71% of the eligible girls did not go to secondary school in 2009. The low rate does not support the case that Pakistans middle class accounts for nearly 35-40% of its population. Pakistans other social indicators relative to most Asian countries do not support the view of Pakistan having a size of middle class that is typical of middle income countries.
Based on the analysis of both the World Bank data and the Asian Development Reports as well as other indicators such as the demand for big ticket consumer spending items like cars and motorcycles, I think the size of the middle class in Pakistan is about 20-25 million (or 11-14% of the population) with a total income of $30-40 billion or 17-22% of national income.
For India:
--Increasing prosperity. Whereas in 2001-'02 just 13.8 million households had incomes in excess of $4,000 per year, by 2009-'10, the number--at constant prices--has risen to 46.7 million, representing a population of about 200 million individuals.
--Decreasing poverty. During the same period, the proportion of very low income households--those earning less than $1,000--has fallen sharply from 65.2 million in 2001-'02 to 41 million by 2009-'10.
Since then, the number have improved drastically.
It is useless trying Pakistan to a county whose economy is order of magnitude size larger and far more advanced and diversified than the primitive towel and bedsheets based economy of Pakistan.