On his blog yesterday, CFR Senior Fellow John Campbell discussed a proposed new way to gauge the size of the middle class: measure the number of cars. He evaluates the measure in the context of South Africa, writing:

The car index appears to support the view that South Africa’s middle class is growing. With eighty percent of the population black, most of that growth must come from blacks. But the high percentage of luxury vehicles sold would imply that the nine percent of the population that is white is also doing well.