India's top 10% of urban households on average own Rs 1.5 crore in assets as against Rs 2,000 at the bottom decile, reflecting the sharp divide between the rich and the poor in cities, showed a government survey.
The situation, however, is slightly better in rural areas with the top 10% households owning on an average Rs 81.17 lakh in assets as against Rs 41,000 at the bottom decile class, revealed All India Debt and Investment Survey 2019 done by the National Statistical Office (NSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
The survey also suggested that poor households are better off in rural areas than in urban centres where the average asset size of households at the bottom of the pyramid is just Rs 2,000.
The latest survey on the All India Debt & Investment Survey was conducted during the period January to December 2019 as a part of 77th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS). Prior to this the survey was carried out in NSS 26th round (1971-72), 37th round (1981-82), 48th round (1992), 59th round (2003) and 70th round (2013).
The main objective of the survey on Debt & Investment was to collect basic quantitative information on the assets and liabilities of the households as on June 30, 2018.
Besides, the survey gathered information on the amount of capital expenditure incurred by the households during the Agricultural Year 2018-19 (July-June), under different heads, like residential buildings, farm business and non-farm business.
The present survey was spread over the entire Indian Union and data were collected in two visits (Visit 1: January-August 2019 and Visit 2: September - December 2019) from the same set of sample households.
The survey was spread over 5,940 villages covering 69,455 households in the rural sector and 3,995 blocks covering 47,006 households in the urban sector.