Consumption affluence Vs human development services deprivation

Sometime back I had written about the changing middle class consumption profile - "as economies develop and incomes grow beyond subsistence requirements, a new set of necessities—education, healthcare, housing, and energy—are taking an increasing share of people’s incomes". But the rising cost of these human development services was creating a new type of deprivation among them.

Now the Times has an excellent graphic that captures why people are enjoying "consumption affluence", fuelled largely by technological progress and cheap imports, while feeling deprived on these new non-tradeable service necessities, which largely determines the human development trajectory.

Unfortunately, inadequate access to these services, which are critical to future life outcomes, hurts the poor - and even the middle class in developing countries - very badly. And the widening inequality is only amplifying these effects.