India’s staggering wealth gap in five charts

December 08, 2014 11:03 am | Updated December 04, 2021 11:06 pm IST

How does inequality in India really look? How much share does the country’s poorest 10 per cent have in its total wealth, how much does the richest, and are the rich getting richer?

We’ve been able to answer some of these questions from new estimates that came out of >Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook 2014 .

For one, the difference in the wealth share held by India’s poorest 10 per cent and the richest 10 per cent is enormous; India’s richest 10 per cent holds 370 times the share of wealth that it’s poorest hold.

India’s richest 10 per cent have been getting steadily richer since 2000, and now hold nearly three-quarters of total wealth.

India’s 1 per centers – its super-rich – have been getting richer even faster. In the early 2000s, India’s top 1 per cent held a lower of share of India’s total wealth than the world’s top 1 per cent held of its total wealth. That changed just before and after the global recession – though the world’s super-rich are recovering - and India’s top 1% holds close to half of the country’s total wealth.

Not surprisingly, India then dominates the world’s poorest 10 per cent, while China dominates the global middle class and the United States the world’s rich.

The world’s super-rich – the top 1 per cent – is overwhelmingly American. Indians make up just 0.5 per cent of the world’s super-rich.

Top News Today

Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.