Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Facts for Today

The richest 1% of Asian households now own about 6-8% of the region’s wealth.

 China's Gini coefficient in 2012 was 0.474 (on a 0-1 scale, zero is perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality), making the country among the most unequal societies.

For India, the figure rose to 0.37 from 0.33.  India had two billionaires in mid-1990s. Today it has 46. Yet nearly 70% of Indians live on less than two dollars a day. Indian billionaires’ wealth equals about 10% of the country’s gross domestic product.
The expenditure share of the top one percent of India’s population increased from 6.5% in 1993 to 9% in 2010. The real income of the top one percent of earners has increased by about 50% in the past two decades. The top 5% of the population spends 21.3% of total expenditure, against 17.7% in 1993. Unequal income distribution has resulted in consumption levels of the top 20% of the population going up, whereas the bottom 80% of the population continues to suffer.

Indonesia saw the highest increase in income inequality levels worldwide: from 0.33 in 2006 to 0.41 in 2011.

No comments: