middle income trap
middle income trap noun: the situation where a country that attains a certain income gets stuck at that level, being unable to compete with other more developed economies in the high-value-added market.
Noun
middle income trap (plural middle income traps)
- The situation where a country that attains a certain income gets stuck at that level, being unable to compete with other more developed economies in the high-value-added market.
- Thailand and Malaysia are hemmed in by the so-called "middle-income trap", which suggests that while countries can move up from the ranks of the very poor, moving further forward is more complex, as competitiveness falls off and costs for investors increase.2010 December 23, Simon Roughneen, “Vietnam: a development success story?”, in The Guardian
- Chinese economists have for many years also worried about the “middle-income trap”, a situation where a country that has reached a certain level of income gets stuck for a long time.2021 July 1, Vincent Ni, “‘Poverty divides us’: gap between rich and poor poses threat to China”, in The Guardian
middle income trap meaning in Vietnamese
middle income trap in Vietnamese
- situation faced by developing countries
- bẫy thu nhập trung bình
Forms of middle income trap
| plural | middle income traps |
|---|---|
| alternative form | middle-income trap |
Origin of middle income trap
Coined by Indian economist Indermit Gill and economist Homi Kharas in 2007 in their book An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth.
Questions about middle income trap
- What does middle income trap mean?
- Middle income trap means the situation where a country that attains a certain income gets stuck at that level, being unable to compete with other more developed economies in the high-value-added market.
- What is middle income trap in Vietnamese?
- Middle income trap in Vietnamese is bẫy thu nhập trung bình. See Middle income trap meaning in Vietnamese.
- What part of speech is middle income trap?
- Middle income trap is a noun.
- What is the plural of middle income trap?
- The plural of middle income trap is middle income traps.
Words near middle income trap in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: middle income trap (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “middle income trap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/middle_income_trap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.