Author

Homi Kharas

Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Co-founder, World Data Lab

Homi Kharas is a Senior Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder of World Data Lab. An economist by training, Kharas is a pioneer in the study of the global middle class. He has over four decades of experience working in or writing about international financial institutions and contributed to the shaping of the U.N.-brokered global agreement in 2015 to pursue Sustainable Development Goals in every country and region of the world. In "The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World" (Brookings, 2023) Kharas examines the history of the middle class from Victorian England to modern day China and India. Indeed, here Kharas reflects on why joining the middle class is such a powerful dream for so many people, while highlighting the threats now emerging as the sheer scale of middle-class consumerism runs up against planetary boundaries.