What Remains of the Tunisian Middle Class after the Arab Spring and the COVID-19 Crisis?

Abstract

This article proposes a recent identification and characterization of the Tunisian middle class in order to emphasize the evolution of the social
structure of this country. This empirical work is based on the February 2021 wave of the COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys for Tunisia provided by the Economic Research Forum. The originality of this paper lies in the combination of economic and sociological criteria to identify the
members of the Tunisian middle class using clustering methods. Several results can be drawn from our study: (i) the Tunisian middle class is an
heterogeneous group in terms of income, level of education and position in the labor market; (ii) while the upper stratum of the middle class (skilled
workers from the public and private sectors) has managed to maintain its central position, its number has shrunk; (iii) the size of the middle class
consisting in self-employed and entrepreneurs has also reduced and its members have particularly suffered from an income decrease following
the crisis; (iv) finally, a significant number of households which used to be part of the former «lower middle class» (workers and informal workers),
had to face social downgrading and have been particularly affected by the current crisis.