Nancy Birdsall’s middle-class work is cited in the New Yorker.
From the article:
Since 2003, some forty million Brazilians have joined the middle class, and the percentage in extreme poverty has shrunk markedly. Though the economy has slowed lately, most people are better off than they were ten years ago. Yet the protests have been widespread, popular, and, most striking of all, dominated by the middle class—the very people who have benefitted from the boom.
Middle-class agitation isn’t unique to Brazil. In developing countries, a growing middle class is often a crucial agent of political and economic change. Nancy Birdsall, of the Center for Global Development, has called it a “catalytic class.” In the past few years, middle-class protesters have taken to the streets over issues of education, corruption, and public space in Chile, India, and Turkey, among other countries.
Read it here.
