India’s staggering wealth gap in five charts

RUKMINI S

December 8, 2014 

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.

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