Which countries have escaped the middle-income trap?
Progress is more noticeable in the Gulf than Africa
Over the past half-century, many promising economies have become ensnared in middle-income mediocrity. To help its biggest client avoid this fate, the World Bank published a flagship report ten years ago entitled “China 2030”. The publication warned of the “middle-income trap”, a term to describe the phenomenon. “Of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 became high-income by 2008,” it claimed. This striking statistic was illustrated with a chart similar to the one below. A decade later, how has the picture changed?
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Losing its bite”
Finance & economics April 1st 2023
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