Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj

Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel (), Thomas Piketty () and Anmol Somanchi
Additional contact information
Nitin Kumar Bharti: UWA - The University of Western Australia, WIL - World Inequality Lab
Lucas Chancel: Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris, WIL - World Inequality Lab
Thomas Piketty: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, WIL - World Inequality Lab
Anmol Somanchi: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, WIL - World Inequality Lab

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Integrating national income accounts, wealth aggregates, tax data, rich lists, and surveys on income, consumption, and wealth in a consistent framework, long-run and short-run trends of income and wealth inequality in India are analyzed. Inequality declined post-independence, began rising in the early 1980s, and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Income and wealth inequality trends closely track each other over the entire period, with the rise in wealth concentration at the top being more pronounced in the most recent decade. By 2022–23, the top 1 percent income and wealth shares (23.3 percent and 40.1 percent) were at their highest historical levels with India's top 1 percent income share among the highest in the world. While the best available data sources at hand are used, it is emphasized that the poor and declining quality of economic data in India poses significant challenges for inequality measurement.

Keywords: top shares; wealth inequality; income inequality; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in World Bank Economic Review, 2026, ⟨10.1093/wber/lhag013⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-05650181

DOI: 10.1093/wber/lhag013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().