Which countries have escaped the middle-income trap?

Progress is more noticeable in the Gulf than Africa

Visitors sit at a restaurant in the Old Town in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on Saturday, July 23, 2022. The tourism-fueled economy of Croatia, expected to adopt the euro in January, will grow more than predicted this year before energy supply issues starting in the fourth quarter pose the risk of a 2023 recession. Photographer: Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg via Getty Images — Image: Getty Images

Mar 30th 2023|Hong Kong

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”