Quantitative approaches to capture the middle class

Several scales have been developed to quantitatively measure the socio-economic strata of a household. The BG Prasad, the Kuppuswamy’s, the Udai Pareek and the MRSI scale belong to the most commonly applied ones. Table 1 provides an overview over the factors the different scales consider for calculating a household’s socio-economic strata and their scope of applica-tion. While the BG Prasad scale completely relies on the income of a household (Khairnar et al., 2016), the Kuppuswamy’s scale does additionally take education and occupation into ac-count (Mishra and Singh, 2003). The MRSI scale and the Udai Pareek scale replace the income variable by counting the number of durables from specific pre-defined lists owned by a house-hold and landownership. While the MRSI scale considers education of the househouse-hold’s main

18

earner as only other relevant variable, the Udai Pareek scale also includes education, caste, occupation, social participation, house ownership, number of draught animals, and family type (The Market Research Society of India, 2011; Singh et al., 2017). Some of the scales are de-signed for different scopes of application. While the BG Prasad and the MRSI scale can be used for urban as well as rural population, the Kuppuswamy’s scale should be used only in urban and peri-urban areas and the Udai Pareek scale was specifically designed for rural areas.

Table 1: Factors considered in different Socio Economic Stratification (SES) scales

Scale Scope of application Factors considered Income Durables

Regarding the assessment of middle-class affiliation, there are also other authors that base their assessment entirely on income, two examples being the assessments of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and Meyer and Birdsall (2012). The NCAER regards households with an income between $8 to $40 available per person per day. Meyer and Birdsall (2012) assess this range a little higher from $10 to $50. Both authors refer to the global economy when assigning these values while regarding also the cost of living within India (Meyer and Birdsall, 2012). The BG Prasad scale, that only considers incomes within India, assigns house-holds as middle-class who have between 949 to 6260 INR (about $13 to $88) available income per month per family member (Khairnar et al., 2016). The Kuppuswamy and the Udai Pareek scale assign points for the different factors they consider, so, for example, a household with a higher education scores higher than one with a lower education. The points from the different factors are summed up in the end and then grouped into different categories from lower to upper class. According to the Kuppuswamy’s scale a household is regarded as middle-class if it scores between 11 to 25 on the scale, whereas on the Udai Pareek scale a middle-class household has to score between 13 to 42 (Mishra and Singh, 2003; Singh et al., 2017). The MRSI scale divides

19

households into groups between E3 (no owned assets, illiterate and no formal education) up to A1 (nine or more assets, at least graduate). While the MRSI does not define what households should be regarded as middle-class, other authors have defined a middle class range from C to B (Ramola and Velmurugan, 2016). Table 2 Provides an overview over the scales’ different ranges.

Table 2: Possible ranges on the different scales and ranges assigned to middle class.

Scale Total range Middle-class range

Meyer and Birdsall

Kuppuswamy’s scale 3-29 11-25

Udai Pareek scale 3-64 13-42

MRSI scale E3-A1 C-B

It is certainly necessary to visualize differences within society in order to point out injustices and to explain the behavior of certain groups, which can be done with all of the scales repre-sented above. However, I argue that all scales include some shortcomings which decrease their validity.

Most of the presented scales only regard income levels and prosperity levels within India. Con-curring with Meyer and Birdsall (2012), I argue that this is inappropriate in an economically globalized world. While the overall cost of living might be lower in countries of the Global South, such as India, compared to countries of the Global North, there are items that have the same prices in India as elsewhere and which can significantly contribute to class affiliation.

Examples for this are housing prices in India’s metropolises, smartphones or branded clothes.

To underline the imbalance of scales which only consider inner-Indian comparisons, it is useful to take a look at the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1,9 per person per day since 2011. However, according to the BG Prasad scale, a person in the year 2016 belonged to the middle class with only about $0,48 available per day. With more than $3,15 a person would already be counted as upper class. Thus, I argue that scales which only work with an

inner-20

Indian comparison obscure poverty and the divide between rich and poor, as actually existing prosperity cannot be depicted.

The relevance of a household’s income for class affiliation can be questionable for several rea-sons. Firstly, it might be difficult for interviewees to make a statement here. Especially in con-texts where the household’s income is not visible on a monthly payroll or a similar document for people and respondents have to sum up incomes from different sources to provide an answer here. Secondly, respondents might mistrust the interviewer and make a wrong statement about their income on purpose because they are afraid that disclosing their income might entail dis-advantages for them. Thirdly, and this is especially relevant for the BG Prasad scale, income can at most be regarded as an indicator but not completely represent socio-economic stratifica-tion.

Scales which rely on durables and landownership try to avoid this aspect by looking at pos-sessed land and durables, which might be easier to recall and disclose to the interviewers. How-ever, the MRSI scale combines the scores gathered for the possession of durables only with one variable, which still leaves out other important aspects such as social participation and caste.

The Udai Pareek scale tries to account for these aspects by assigning points to caste affiliation and membership in organizations. However, all these variables, including recording the dura-bles available in a household, are highly questionable. For example, all duradura-bles are regarded as of equivalent value, even though this is certainly not the case. Furthermore, while member-ship in an organization is probably an indicator for social participation, it is certainly not the only way to participate in social life and can thus not fully represent this aspect of socio-eco-nomic stratification.

To sum up, my overall criticism towards the presented scales is that they tempt scholars to pretend to measure an aspect of society, which is not possible or too complex to measure. While it is legitimate to say that certain findings of a study correlate with income or education of the participants, drawing conclusions regarding socio-economic class measured by these scales should be done only cautiously because of India’s high “regional diversity” (Mawdsley, 2004, p. 87), I criticize the claim of the different scales to be applicable for all India, some even in-cluding, both, rural and urban areas. Depending on the local context, the variables used in the different scales might have very different meanings. Scales, that are claimed to measure socio-economic class in both rural and urban areas are most vulnerable in this regard. For instance, ownership of agricultural land, which is included in the MRSI scale, is certainly of different

21

value depending on a household’s location but it is regarded as equally important for all house-holds. However, even scales which should only be used for either rural or urban populations, do not regard regional differences, such as different living expenses in different regions. Addi-tionally, none of the presented scales defines what a rural or an urban region actually is.