Mint Quick Edit | Gini: A dim lamp casts weak light on inequality
1 week, 1 day ago

Mint Quick Edit | Gini: A dim lamp casts weak light on inequality

Live Mint  

India’s latest survey of household consumption expenditure, carried out from August 2023 to July 2024, found a decline in the “Gini coefficient" of consumption inequality since the same period of 2022-23. If one plots the proportion of total spending by groups against their percentage of total homes, say from the least spending 1% to the most, then a straight 45° incline would show perfect equality: i.e., every percentile slice spends the same. In reality, the curve bulges below that line, as low-percentile homes spend much less than upscale ones. While income and especially wealth numbers would show bigger Gini bulges than consumption, unless we have reliable data on the top 0.1%, this measure casts dim light on actual inequality.

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History of this topic

India’s rural-urban consumption gap narrowed in 2023-24, govt survey says
1 week, 5 days ago

India’s rural-urban consumption gap narrowed in 2023-24, govt survey says

Live Mint  

New Delhi: The average monthly per capita consumption expenditure in India saw significant growth in 2023-24, fuelled by higher spending across rural and urban households and a narrowing consumption gap between the two, according to data released by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation on Friday. "When ranked by MPCE, the increase in the average MPCE in 2023-24 from …

India logs fall in inequality between 2011-12 and 2022-23, says govt report
7 months ago

India logs fall in inequality between 2011-12 and 2022-23, says govt report

Hindustan Times  

Inequality in both rural and urban areas of India fell between 2011-12 and 2022-23, according to a full report on Household Consumption Expenditure released on Friday by the National Sample Survey Office. The full report released Friday shows a fall in the Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of inequality, for both rural and urban spending between 2011-12 and 2022-23 …

Mint Primer | Mind the income gap: Is India becoming a plutocracy?
9 months, 2 weeks ago

Mint Primer | Mind the income gap: Is India becoming a plutocracy?

Live Mint  

Income and wealth inequality in India are at a historical peak with the share of the richest 1% higher than in countries like China and Brazil, finds a new study by the World Inequality Lab. Inequality in India declined post-independence till early-1980s, after which it began rising and skyrocketed beginning 2000s, shows the report titled ‘Income and Wealth Inequality in …

SBI Research backs NSSO report, credits Modi govt for decline in India's consumption inequality
10 months, 1 week ago

SBI Research backs NSSO report, credits Modi govt for decline in India's consumption inequality

Op India  

On Tuesday, a research report published by the State Bank of India corroborated the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, which was conducted by the National Sample Survey Office. Decadal changes in MPCE show decline in consumption inequality, graphic via SBI Research “Rural Poverty has thus staged a significant 440-basis point decline since 2018-19 and Urban Poverty a 170-basis …

India among top countries with high income, wealth inequality: UNDP report
1 year, 2 months ago

India among top countries with high income, wealth inequality: UNDP report

Live Mint  

India has emerged among top countries with high income and wealth inequality but the share of the population living in multidimensional poverty fell from 25 to 15 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-21, the UNDP said in a new report. Despite these successes, poverty remains persistently concentrated in states that are home to 45 per cent of the country's population …

Average household spending rose 3.5% from August 2023 to July 2024, shows govt. survey
1 year, 5 months ago

Average household spending rose 3.5% from August 2023 to July 2024, shows govt. survey

The Hindu  

India’s average household consumption spending on a per capita basis rose about 3.5% in real terms through August 2023 to July 2024 from a year ago, as per the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, and the Centre asserted this signals a decline in consumption inequality as well as a narrowing gap between urban and rural spends. In real terms, the average …

A poverty trend in search of an explanation
2 years, 6 months ago

A poverty trend in search of an explanation

The Hindu  

A noticeable absence in the blitzkrieg of information on the economy periodically unleashed by the Union government over the past few years has been estimates of poverty. While the level of poverty estimated by these two studies varies considerably, with the one by Roy and van der Weide showing twice the poverty level estimated by Bhalla et al., they share …

How has India's consumption inequality come down to a four-decade low?
2 years, 9 months ago

How has India's consumption inequality come down to a four-decade low?

Business Standard  

A recently published IMF working paper said that the effect of the subsidy adjustments on poverty is striking. The report claimed that consumption inequality during the Covid-affected 2020-21 in India fell to near the lowest level in the last 40 years, primarily because of free food supply to 800 million people among other factors, the working paper said. However, the …

Number Theory: How rich are India’s richest – and how poor are the rest?
2 years, 9 months ago

Number Theory: How rich are India’s richest – and how poor are the rest?

Hindustan Times  

The scourge of wealth inequality is a global phenomenon. In a recently released working paper “The sky and the stratosphere: concentrated wealth in India during the lost decade”, we studied the changes in the household wealth distribution between 2012 and 2018. Official data suggests that the Gini coefficient of per adult household wealth in India fell from 0.718 in 2012 …

Global (and Indian) trends in inequality
3 years, 1 month ago

Global (and Indian) trends in inequality

The Hindu  

The story so far: The World Inequality Lab, a research centre at the Paris School of Economics, released the 2022 World Inequality Report on December 7, 2021. The report has found India to be one of the world’s most unequal countries, with the top 1% getting 21.7% of the national income. The report reveals that income inequality in India today …

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