economy

Controller Vallarino says the middle class has grown

Controller Carlos Vallarino says the middle class has grown. Others scoff at his numbers.

LA PRENSA

mismeasurer: Controller Carlos Vallarino962442

Most Panamanians are in the middle class, according to a study made public yesterday by the Contraloría General de la República (CGR).

The study claims that 48.2 percent of the population belonged to the middle class in 2003 and that this percentage increased to 51.7 percent in 2006. This suggests that 191,397 people were lifted out of poverty during the period measured.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the CGR's definition of "middle class" is quite broad. It includes everyone with an annual income between $100 and $10,000. That would include workers who make less than the minimum wage, from those provide domestic services to professionals who earn more than $800 a month.

The report sent to the media yesterday by controller Carlos Vallarino also says that the percentage of households in the lower economic class (or poor people) decreased during the same period from 42.5 percent to 38.6 percent.

Taking inflation and sociodemographic forces into account, the middle class ought to have decreased 0.1 percent instead of increasing. But in reality, "it increased 4.1 percent," the report underscored.

Some sociologists, such as Raúl Leis, question the measurement concepts used in the report. "How can you include people who earn less than the minimum wage or earn $100 a month in the middle class, since that is the realm of poverty?" he asked. "You are putting a good part of the [lower] class in the middle class and that belittles the concept."

According to Leis, the middle class is the sector located between the [lower] classes and the more fortunate who are not living under subsistence conditions but who are still able to accumulate wealth and live by their work, not by the rents they collect.