This is shaping up to be the decade of protests. From Chile and Brazil to Turkey and Thailand, riots have broken out – and in the Middle East and Ukraine – broken governments. Each protest has its own character: but there are striking similarities among what may appear as disparate civic unrest and in the people participating in them. Evidence suggests that the “prototypical” protestor is not the destitute with nothing-to-lose, but rather, the outdated “working middle class”. And these protests are occurring more in advanced and middle-income countries than in countries mired in poverty.

This paper explains the paradoxical phenomena of protests in fairly wealthy countries and of the increasing prominence of the working middle class within these protests – using the metrics and analytical framework of subjective well-being (SWB) and data from the Gallup World Poll.

Since there is conceptual and methodological ambiguity about what constitutes this “working middle class” today, we construct a “middle group” cohort comprising of middle-income (in country income quintiles 2 to 4), middle-aged (between 25 and 45 years), educated (having completed high school) individuals – so as to closely resemble the stylized notion of this group. We use the Cantril self-anchoring scale of SWB to measure life satisfaction, and indicators such as satisfaction with standard of living, perceptions about whether hard work leads to success in life – to capture this group’s perceived prospects in life. We also include respondents’ confidence in core public entities such as the national and local government, law-enforcement authorities, judiciary, media, and their satisfaction with basic public services.

Our key result is that in countries that have witnessed recent episodes of civic unrest, those in the “middle group” are more likely to believe that opportunities to progress further in life have decreased – even though they live in countries which have had modest to robust economic growth in the recent past. Rapid economic growth, while eventually beneficial in the aggregate, is inherently destabilizing in the interim period during which established norms and institutions break down. This “unhappy growth” phenomenon is most acute for the “middle group”; they make significant personal investments in the existing socio-economic system – such as educational, skills training, and entrepreneurial investments – to optimize their future returns. Dramatic changes in opportunities and rewards systems upset this balance, leaving them with little scope for maneuver. For example, this group has a greater stake in public institutions than the poor because they are more vested in them; and they are less able to circumvent them than the rich. Weakness in public institutions aggravates their frustration and disillusionment.

The global community has made great strides in reducing absolute poverty. But many countries now house an increasingly frustrated middle class, as manifested in the protests. Left unaddressed, festering public resentment can create as much economic and political turmoil as mismanaged macroeconomic policies – including in countries which are performing well economically. A paradox of progress, perhaps: but one that needs to be addressed.