The middle class in most countries supports economic development by organizing the demand for public goods and requiring government accountability to promote an improved welfare state, and thus reduce inequality and poverty.
In Jordan, instead for demanding better spending by the government on public goods, the middle class, encompassing 30% of Jordanians, seemed to individualize (make private) the demand for public goods. In other words, as the numbers show, the middle class opted to replace the government in the provision of such goods.
A public good is a product that an
individual can consume without reducing its availability to others and from
which no one is excluded. Examples of public goods include roads, police and
army protection, primary education, clean air, etc. Typically public goods are
provided by governments through capital expenditures and they are not profit. On the other hand, by individualizing one
means that individuals opt to provide these goods or services themselves.
Many of the services that are typically provided by the
government in Jordan are being provided by the market system through individual
spending. For example, (33 percent) of children go to private schools while 67% are enrolled in public schools. In terms of higher education, 344,796 students were enrolled at universities in Jordan in 2020-2021, 27.5% of tertiary
education students are enrolled at 17 private universities, and the
remainder at ten public universities.
The public health care system shows another departure from
public to private supply. Of the 122 hospitals in Jordan, 72 are private, 33
are government, 15 are military and 2 are university hospitals. Clearly, the
number of private hospitals far outweighs the number of public hospitals. Furthermore,
complaints regarding the public healthcare system and attacks on staff at these
hospitals may be additional evidence of the level of public frustration and
lack of trust in the system.
How about drinking water? According to
a study conducted by the Jordanian-German Water Programme, around 80% of the central region’s residents buy bottled water. Furthermore, bottled water
seems to be widely spread. According to the Ministry of Health, there are
32 bottled water factories, 542 local water purification plants, and five
mineral water bottling plants.
What about public transport? It is
true that the government provides adequate roads; however, public transport on
these roads is mainly provided by the private sector. The number of registered
vehicles, as reported in Dec 2020 was 1,728,144 units. Since there are restrictions
on vehicle ownership by non-Jordanians, one can surmise that there is a vehicle
for every five Jordanians, which is the average household size. Furthermore,
year-on-year, there is a 3.25 percent increase in 2020 over the number of
vehicles (1,673,759) in 2019. Note that the rate of increase is higher than the
population growth rate in 2020 which was 1%. This is simply because the
rate of increase is commensurate with the rate of entry of youth into the job
market, not the population growth rate. Among the negative impacts of such
individualization of public transport is the stress on the environment through carbon emissions, and the balance of
payments deficit-in June 2022 alone, Jordan imported 8,148 vehicles, valued at
JD105 million, and JD10 million in spare parts.
What about the
replacement of electricity through photovoltaic cells? In 2019, around 15% of all households in Jordan were equipped with solar-based water heating
systems. Had there been more incentives and fewer
restrictions, this number would have easily risen to more than 30%.
In almost each of these public or
semipublic goods, the ratio is close to 30%, which is also the percentage
of the middle class. Could this mean that the middle class of Jordan has tired
of requesting the government to improve its services and has opted instead to
individualize such public goods? Does it also mean that there is a lack of
satisfaction or trust in government services? The numbers do support such
conclusions.
Published in Jordan News:
https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-36/Opinion/The-poverty-trap-and-intergenerational-mobility-21153
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