Income inequality in India: Top 10% upper caste households own 60% wealth

Among OBCs and STs too, top 10% had cornered most wealth. Top 10% of both groups held around 52% of wealth in 2012 and top 10% of SCs' share increased three percentage points to 46.7% till 2012

Although India’s upper caste households earned nearly 47% more than the national average annual household income, the top 10% within these castes owned 60% of the wealth within the group in 2012, as per a recent paper by the World Inequality Database.

Further, the wealthiest 1% among them grew their wealth by nearly 16 percentage points to 29.4% over the decade to 2012, the paper, entitled ‘Wealth Inequality, Class and Caste in India, 1961-2012’ and published in November 2018, said.

The vast inequality of income and wealth between and within castes highlighted in the paper are significant in the