World Inequality Report 2026: Is the Gap Between Rich and Poor Getting Wider in India?
World Inequality Report 2026: India is witnessing extreme inequality between the rich and the poor. A small number of people possess immense wealth, while the majority are forced to live below the poverty line. According to the World Inequality Report 2026, only one percent of the population in India owns approximately 40 percent of the country's total wealth, making income inequality in India among the highest in the world, with little prospect of improvement.
According to the information provided in the report, 65 percent of the country's wealth is held by the richest 10 percent of the population. On the other hand, the bottom 50 percent own only 6.4 percent of the wealth. The report was prepared by economists Lucas Chancel, Ricardo Gomez-Carrera, Rowaida Moshrif, and Thomas Piketty.
The top 10 percent of earners receive 58 percent of the national income, while the bottom 50 percent receive only 15 percent.
Only 15.7% of women are in the workforce
According to the report, the women's participation in the workforce is very low. Only 15.7 percent of women are employed or engaged in work. There has been no significant improvement in this over the last 10 years. The report indicates that in 1980, a large proportion of India's population belonged to the middle class, i.e., the middle segment of the national income.
However, this population has now shifted to the bottom 50 percent. Between 2014 and 2024, the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent has widened slightly. This gap increased from 38 percent to 38.2 percent.
Rapidly growing inequality in the world
Inequality has also increased significantly at the global level. The report states that the world's total wealth has reached a historic level, but most of it is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people. The wealth of just 60,000 people (0.001%) of the world's population is three times greater than the wealth of the bottom half of the world's population. The wealth of the richest 0.001 percent of people was 3.8 percent in 1995, which will increase to 6.1 percent by 2025. Meanwhile, the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population has remained stagnant at around 2 percent for the past 20 years.