India’s top 1% held 40.1% of the country’s total wealth in 2022–23, while receiving 22.6% of national income, according to a World Inequality Lab working paper published in March 2024. The authors describe both shares as the highest in their respective historical series, but caution that India’s economic data are poor and have recently deteriorated; they say their estimates likely understate inequality.
What the 40.1% figure means
The 40.1% figure is a share of total wealth, not a share of annual income. In the paper’s 2022–23 estimate, the top 1% held 40.1% of wealth and the top 10% held 65%. By contrast, the top 1% received 22.6% of national income, while the bottom 50% received 15%.
Wealth is a stock measured at a point in time: broadly, what people own, less what they owe. Income is a flow received over a period, such as wages or other earnings. The two percentages therefore describe different things and should not be combined or substituted for one another.
Is India the most unequal country in the world?
Not as a blanket conclusion. The paper’s claim that India’s inequality is “among the very highest in the world” refers specifically to the top 1% share of national income. Its authors say India’s 22.6% share exceeds the comparison estimates they cite for South Africa, Brazil and the United States. That is not a definitive ranking across every country or every measure.
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The wealth comparison is different. The authors describe India’s top 1% wealth share as above estimates for the United States and China and approaching Brazil’s. In their selected comparison, Brazil and South Africa have higher top 10% wealth concentration. Country comparisons depend on matching the measure, population unit, definitions and reference years; the study draws on country-specific work and World Inequality Database estimates.
How inequality changed over time
The authors’ series estimates that top income and wealth shares declined after independence through the early 1980s, then rose. They describe the increase as particularly pronounced from the early 2000s, with top-end wealth concentration rising sharply between 2014–15 and 2022–23. These are estimates of distributional trends; they do not establish that every group or every dimension of inequality moved in the same way.
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The paper’s income series reaches back to 1922, while its wealth series begins in 1961. Those different starting points matter when interpreting claims that the 2022–23 observations are historical highs: each claim is relative to its own series, not to an identical span of measurement.
How the researchers estimated income and wealth shares
“Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj” is World Inequality Lab Working Paper 2024/09, dated March 18, 2024. Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty and Anmol Somanchi combine national income accounts, wealth aggregates, tax tabulations, rich lists, and surveys covering income, consumption and wealth to construct long-run series. The headline figures are therefore modelled estimates from multiple sources, not a simple count or census of every household’s assets and earnings.
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The authors explicitly warn that India’s economic data quality is “notably poor” and has declined recently. They say the estimates likely represent a lower bound to actual inequality. That is their stated assessment of the data limitations, not a guarantee that the true shares are necessarily higher by a known amount.
What the paper proposes—and what it does not show
The authors argue that the tax system may be regressive when viewed through net wealth, and call for tax reform that takes both income and wealth into account, alongside broad public investment in health, education and nutrition. These are policy arguments, not findings that establish a single cause for the measured rise in inequality.
The paper also models a 2% “super tax” on the 167 wealthiest families in 2022–23 as potentially yielding 0.5% of national income. This is a modelled estimate of a proposed measure, not an enacted tax or observed revenue.
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The primary source is the authors’ World Inequality Lab Working Paper 2024/09; the World Inequality Database summary was published March 19, 2024.
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A World Inequality Report 2026 country-sheet extract also gives roughly 40% of wealth for the top 1% and around 65% for the top 10%. The extract does not establish the exact reference year or confirm that its definitions match the 2024 paper, so it is a limited later cross-check rather than a replacement for the dated 2022–23 estimates.
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