This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 15, 2025 - December 21, 2025

APURVA Sanghi, the World Bank’s outgoing lead economist for Malaysia raised a few eyebrows with his comments on Malaysia’s middle class on his X account in early December.

Citing “revealing figures” from World Bank analysis, Apurva posted a simple bar chart with the header “Dimming middle-class aspirations” to show that “for the middle class, the odds of stalling or sliding are x2 [two times] the odds of climbing up”. “Basically, the Malaysian middle class is mostly upward immobile!” he said. [See X post with Chart 1]

The middle class depicted in the chart is defined as the 20% of households that sit just above the bottom 40% (B40) and still have 40% of households above them, basically, the B40 to B60.

The two times likelihood was basically derived by dividing the 67% chance of those in B40 to B60 who are likely to remain in the group or fall into B40 with the 33% chance of them moving up the social mobility ladder.

Are Malaysians twice as likely to slide down the social ladder than to climb higher?

When asked about the chart, Apurva told The Edge that it is not in any published World Bank report. However, he confirmed that the figures are “an adaptation of more technical findings” in a report titled “A fresh take on reducing inequality and enhancing mobility in Malaysia” that the World Bank released in February this year.

The report, specifically Figure 3.8, shows a more complex chart on short-term relative mobility across different classes in five quintiles each representing 20% of society.

The B40 to B60 middle class depicted by Apurva is equivalent to quintile three (Q3). [See Chart 2]

The chart basically shows the proportion of people who moved up (columns with positive numbers), stayed put (at zero) and fell back (columns with negative numbers) in each quintile of society.

The two times mentioned in Apurva’s post is calculated by dividing the total number of people in each quintile who moved up (positive numbers) with those who stayed put or fell (zero or negative) in that quintile.

For example, in Q3, 6.6% people moved up, translating into a probability of 33% given that each quintile represents 20%. That means 67% either stayed put or fell.

For Q4 — which basically represents the top 20% of the B40 group — only 4.75% moved up, translating into a probability of 23.75%. Put simply, 24% moved up while the remaining 76% either stayed put or fell.

For Q5 — which basically represents the bottom 20% of the people (B20) — over 64% are likely to stay where they are with more likely to be worse off, according to the chart.

We could not compare the number of people who moved up only with the number of people who slipped further as the World Bank report does not provide specific numerical breakdowns apart from what is shown in the report.

However, the World Bank report does say “the poor are more likely to be stuck at the bottom of the distribution, whereas the rich are more likely to be secure at the top”.

The report also says “relative mobility patterns do not change dramatically over time, about 24% to 32% of the population is upwardly mobile in any given interval, while the share of those moving down is generally between 27% and 34%”, and that “over half of the people in the bottom quintile …  are trapped in the bottom of the distribution, improving at a slower pace than the rest”.

In other words, the Malaysian middle class is, as Apurva puts it, largely upwardly immobile. Here it is important to remember that the moving up bucket is being compared not only with those who fall but also those who remain where they are (neither up nor down).

Is that fair? Not moving up in society may not be bad if the entire society is enjoying a better quality of life.

Yet, if that were the case, there may not be criticism of China’s gruelling “996 work culture” and so many fans around the globe for South Korean dramas depicting the struggles of the lower class and middle class, where characters say they have always worked hard but are still struggling to pay off debt and there is no guarantee that they will be well rewarded for their hard work. On the flip side, retribution is certain should there be any slack so they have no choice but to keep slogging.

Apurva declined comment on global averages. Still, there is growing empirical research on social mobility in the developed world as well as developing countries.

In 2020, for instance, the World Economic Forum came up with a Global Social Mobility Index that showed “very few economies have the right conditions to foster social mobility and consequently income inequalities have become entrenched. On average, across key developed and developing countries, the top 10% of earners have nearly 3.5 times the income of the bottom 40%”.

“At any point of time, equality of opportunity is both a result and a driver of social mobility, being the ability of individuals to change their socioeconomic situation during their lifetime and across generations. The intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage perpetuates inequality of opportunity because unequal starts have an enduring impact on a wide range of well-being outcomes later in life,” says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has 38 member countries across Europe, North and South America and Asia-Pacific, in a November 2022 policy paper on challenges to social mobility and equality of opportunity.

“Apart from differences in family background and other endowments at birth, other life circumstances may exert persistent barriers to social mobility. Evidence shows that people in poverty struggle to escape, while those with high incomes tend to remain at the top of the income ladder. In the run-up to the Covid-19 pandemic, people in the bottom quintile of household disposable income had a 55% probability of remaining in the same income group after four years,” the OECD report reads. [See Chart 3]

Asked for his thoughts on Malaysia, Apurva pointed to the World Bank report. Key recommendations to promote economic mobility include enhancing opportunities by measuring and tracking mobility trends and inequality of opportunities alongside inequality metrics. There is also a need to improve the quality of education early, especially for poorer households to strengthen foundational skills necessary to move upward in the labour market. Social protection also needs to be enhanced with more targeted transfers alongside improved access to assets such as affordable housing and credit for micro-businesses to help them escape the bottom.

When the World Bank report was released in February, The Edge reported that inequality of opportunity — arising from predetermined life circumstances rather than individual effort — accounted for 65% of total market income inequality in 2022, up from 61% in 2004. Findings also suggested a need to rethink the approach to interventions. 

Indeed, the ingredients necessary to promote social mobility are also well documented, but experts would likely agree that these are easier said than done. 

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