Abstract
In order to adapt the controversial sociological concept of ‘Middle Class’ to an African agriculture-based economy, exemplified by Madagascar, we propose the concept of Moderate Prosperity. As a case study, we use detailed data from 508 households in the 2008 Itasy Observatory. We stratify them using four distinguishing socio-economic factors: household income quintile, head of household’s education level, income structure and land tenure. We describe four Moderate Prosperity clusters that reflect the agro-economic diversity of the Itasy region: a vulnerable group of agriculturally diversified households in the third income quintile with locally issued land title; an emerging group of skilled, polyculture farmers belonging to both the lowest and highest quintiles; a traditional group of uneducated rice farmers in the fourth quintile with traditional land ownership; and an upper group of educated livestock farmers, non-agricultural independents and workers, belonging to the top income quintile with locally issued land title.
Notes
1 Defined as people earning between $12 and $50 a day.
2 People with a daily consumption of between $2 and $4.
3 In this article, we use the term ‘Moderate Prosperity’ to mean the same thing as ‘Small Prosperity’ (Darbon and Toulabour Citation2013) which is a direct translation of the French term ‘Petite Prospérité’ (Darbon Citation2012).
4 World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/.
5 ROR: Réseau des Observatoires Ruraux.
6 For instance, the World Bank (Citation2007) and Milanovic and Yitzhaki (Citation2002) use the daily income range between $12 and $50. Ravallion (Citation2010), Banerjee and Duflo (Citation2008) and the African Development Bank (Citation2011) propose a lower boundary of $2.
7 The most common definitions use the interval between 75 and 125% of the median income (Birdsall et al. Citation2000; Pressman Citation2007) while some others consider the middle three quintiles of the income distribution (Easterly Citation2001).
8 Department for International Development: see the public document http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/DOC59.pdf.
9 The RuralStruc Program analyses and compares liberalization processes and their impacts on agriculture and the rural sector in seven developing countries (Mexico, Nicaragua, Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Kenya and Madagascar).
10 Alaotra is also known as the rice granary of Madagascar.
11 We report the total annual gross household income divided by the number of its members. Rural households typically have various sources of income from their members’ activities and a large degree of self-sufficiency based on their own production. The gross household income was thus computed by combining incomes from non-farm activities, agricultural wages and remittances with the value of the production consumed by the household and sales of all farm produce in 2008.
12 4$ and 12$ are, respectively, the lower boundary of the African ‘lower middle class’ (African Development Bank Citation2011) and the GMC (World Bank Citation2007).
13 Maize–bean intercropping and crop rotations alternating root crops (cassava) and seed plants (rice) are often practised in Itasy (Réseau des Observatoires Ruraux Citation2008).