What Is the “Middle Income Trap”?

Abstract

Abstract In 2007, Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas (2007), two World Bank economists, published a report titled An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth, which suggested that East Asia would soon develop into a middle-income region and proposed the concept of the “middle income trap”. It should be noted that the report did not provide an in-depth interpretation of the concept, nor did it offer a clear income range for the “middle income trap”. In 2011, Homi Kharas and Harinder Kohli (2011) further elaborated on the concept, specifying that when a country escapes the poverty trap in the low-income development stage and enters into the middle-income development phase, the country may face growth stagnation and inability to further move up the ladder into the high-income range.