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> Posted by Sergio Guzmán and Sonja E. Kelly, Smart Campaign Lead Specialist and Fellow, CFI

Some call them the lower middle class, some call them assets-poor, some refer to them as the 4-10s for their earning average of $4 to $10 per day. In a publication released this year, the World Bank called this group the “vulnerable class,” bridging the gap between a class they refer to as “poor” and the class traditionally known as the “middle class.” Two of the lead authors on the publication, Dr. Augusto de la Torre and Dr. Julián Messina, presented their findings at a recent event at the Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for research and conversation centered on Latin America.

The authors distinguish between two economic strata. The first is the vulnerable class, which is above the poverty line, but is still in danger of losing their discretionary income. The second is the middle class, which is firmly above the poverty line, and is unlikely to lose their discretionary income. The vulnerable class is defined by a narrow dollar range—only $4 to $10 per day. Despite this narrow income definition, in the last decade this class has grown to now contain the highest proportion of the Latin American population when compared to other economic classes. (The same phenomenon is appearing in other regions, as well, although that is a story for another day.) The graph below comes directly from the authors’ presentation (for more on the report’s methodology, see the publication here).

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