The daily income of the poorest 10% of people in the world’s rich countries is higher than that of the richest 10% of people in India. This picture has emerged from an analysis of data from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform for 2026.
According to the data, the per-person daily income or consumption of the poorest 10% of people in India is about $3. By contrast, the threshold is $25 in the United States, $31 in Canada, and $28 in Germany and Australia. This makes clear the overall shortfall in income and living standards in India’s economy.
The threshold of daily income or consumption for the richest 10% of people in India, meanwhile, is about $10 a person. The figure is $173 in the United States, $129 in Canada and Australia, and $128 in Germany. According to India’s Economic Survey, a person earning 80,000 rupees a month falls within the country’s top 10% of earners.
The comparison shows that the living standards of even India’s best-off households are far below those of people at the bottom of the income distribution in advanced economies.
Ahana Duttagupta, a programme associate at the Foundation for Economic Development, told NDTV that the comparison points to a deep problem in India. The country’s problem is not only poverty, she said, but that people’s incomes are low overall.
In her view, a person in India with the capacity to spend or consume $10 a day can find a place among the country’s richest 10%. Yet in countries such as Canada, Japan and the United States, the same amount can put someone among the poorest 10%.
She said it is very important to raise the living standards of poor Indians, but the country cannot be made prosperous by that step alone. Even if the incomes of the poor are raised to the level of today’s comparatively well-off, a gap with living standards in the developed countries may remain.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report