A Project Report on

“A STUDY ON INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA”

A project Submitted to
University of Mumbai for partial completion of the degree of
Bachelor in Commerce (Accounting and Finance)
Under the Faculty of Commerce

By
Kinjal Shantilal Gala

Under the guidance of

DR. A. Mahesh Kumar

Mumbai Pradesh Arya Vidya Sabha's

GURUKUL COLLEGE OF COMMERCE

(Affiliated To University Of Mumbai)

TILAK ROAD, GHATKOPAR (EAST), MUMBAI – 400077.

MARCH 2019
 Mumbai Pradesh Arya Vidya Sabha’s
GURUKUL COLLEGE OF COMMERCE
(Affiliated To University Of Mumbai)
TILAK ROAD, GHATKOPAR (EAST), MUMBAI – 400077.

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Miss. Kinjal Shantilal Gala has worked and duly completed her Project
Work for the degree of Bachelor in Commerce (Accounting & Finance) under the Faculty of
Commerce in the subject of Accounting & Finance and her project is entitled, “ A STUDY
ON INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA” under my supervision.

I further certify that the entire work has been done by the learner under my guidance and that
no part of its has been submitted previously for any Degree or Diploma of any University.

It is her own work and facts reported by her personal findings and investigation.

Dr. A. Mahesh Kumar

Date of Submission:
 DECLARATION

I the undersigned Miss. Kinjal Shantilal Gala here by, declare that the work embodied in this
project work titled “A STUDY ON INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA”, forms my own
contribution to the research work carried out under the guidance of Dr. A Mahesh Kumar is a
result of my own research work and has not been previously submitted to any other University
for any other Degree/Diploma to this or any other University.

Whenever reference has been made to previous works of others, it has been clearly indicated
as such and included in the bibliography.

I, here by further declare that all information of this document has been obtained and presented
in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct.

Miss. Kinjal Shantilal Gala

Certified by

Dr. A Mahesh Kumar

 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To list who all have helped me is difficult because they are so numerous and the depth is so
enormous.

I would like to acknowledge the following as being idealistic channels and fresh dimensions in
the completion of this project.

I take this opportunity to thank the University of Mumbai for giving me chance to do the
project.

I would like to thank my Principal, Dr. Nandita Roy for providing the necessary facilities
required for completion of this project.

I take this opportunity to thank our Coordinator Dr. Priti Ghag, for the moral support and
guidance.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards my project guide Dr. A Mahesh Kumar
whose guidance and care made the project successful.

I would like to thank my College Library, for having provided various reference books and
magazines related to my project.

Lastly, I would like to thank each and every person who directly or indirectly helped me in the
completion of the project especially my Parents and Peers who supported me throughout my
project.
 INDEX

SR.NO TITLE PAGE NO.

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.0 DEFINATION OF INCOME INEAUQLITY
1.1 HISTORY OF INCOME INEQUALITY
1.2 REASONS OF INCOME INEQUALITY
1.3 CAUSES OF INCOME INEQUALITY
1.4 EFFECTS OF INCOME INEQUALITY
1.5 CONSEQUENCES OF INCOME INEQAULITY
1.6 GENDER PAY GAP IN INDIA

CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITREATURE

CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
2.2 HYPOTHESIS
2.3 METHODS OF STUDY
2.4 STATISTICAL DATA
2.5 TABLES
2.6 THE USE OF THE STUDY
2.7 LIMITATIONS
2.8 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
2.9 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
 CHAPTER 4
ANALYSIS ON INCOME INEQUALITY
4.1 INCOME INEQUALITY UP BOTH IN RURAL & URBAN
AREA
4.2 FACTS ON INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA
4.3 INEQUALITY OF INCOME IN INDIA
4.4 TRUTH ABOUT INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA
4.5 GENDER PAY GAP SCENARIO DAUNTING IN
INDIA,WOMEN GET PAID 20% LESS THAN MEN
4.6 HOW DOES INCOME INEQUALITY AFFECT ECONOMIC
GROWTH
4.7 ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN INDIA & WORLD
4.8 INDIA’S RISING INCOME INEQUALIY IS TAKING THE
SHINE OFF ITS GROWTH STORY EVEN IN THE
WORLD’S EYES

CHAPTER 5
COLLECTION OF DATA WITH THE HELP OF
QUESTIONNAIRE

CHAPTER 6
6.1 FINDINGS
6.2 SUGGESTIONS
6.3 CONCLUSION

BIBILOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1
 INTRODUCTION

1.0 DEFINATION OF INCOME INEQUALITY

Income inequality means unequal access to wealth and income. This brief mostly deals with income. In most
developed countries, market income is mainly from wages and salaries, but also from returns on capital such
as shares and rents. People's market income is then reduced by taxation and/or increased by government
transfers such as pensions and child payments.

Inequality is usually discussed in terms of equivalized household income, which takes account of how many
people the income has to support, and (often) whether the household pays rent. Inequality in a society is
usually measured as the ratio of high incomes to low; for example, the ratio of the top 20% of equivalised
household incomes to the bottom 20%It is important to distinguish between inequality and wealth and poverty.
A rich country can be relatively unequal, and a poor country can be relatively equal.

Many effects of poverty are well known. For example, children of poor families do not perform as well at
school as those of affluent families. Poor people have worse health than rich people.

These are results—or at least correlates—of poverty, and they have been documented in most societies. The
relationships are usually fairly easy to demonstrate by correlating two variables; for example, by linking
family income of a large number of subjects and the test scores or health status of those subjects.

It is less easy to demonstrate a causal relationship between inequality of itself and other social outcomes,
principally because inequality is not a characteristic of an individual. Also, the causal mechanisms may be less
obvious.
1.1 HISTORY OF INCOME INEQUALITY

 India’s income inequality problems are well-acknowledged and many believe that the roots of this
inequality were laid down by the British Raj.

 The institutional and commercial policies of British India made the rich richer and poor poorer during
colonial rule, according to this popular view.

 However, a new research by economic historian Tirthankar Roy of the London School of Economics
finds that the role of the British in worsening income inequality may be overstated.

 The British rule transformed India’s economy, shifting the nation from an exporter of manufactured
goods (such as textiles) into an exporter of agricultural goods, according to Roy.

 Most economic historians claim that this increased inequality between those owning property and the
property-less because of capitalist exploitation and colonial intervention, favouring landlords, traders
and money-lenders over peasants, artisans and landless labourers.

 Reclassifying historical national income data from around 90% of the workforce compiled by
statistician F.J. Atkinson into broad occupation classes and looking at the income shares of the top and
bottom end of the distribution, Roy finds inconclusive evidence for this claim.

 His research finds that the fortunes of the core propertied group, the rentier-landlords, actually fell.
 Propertied classes also include the land-owning peasants, who experienced a rise in income share in the
pre-war decades between 1875 and 1895 followed by a decline. This, according to Roy, is because the
open economy of the 19th century affected land- and trade-dependent occupations differently.

 Low and stagnant land yields in India limited average incomes of those engaged in land-dependent
occupations. Despite the limited growth, Roy finds that the distance between average income and the
poverty line did not change significantly, suggesting that the poorest did not become poorer under
British rule.
 By contrast, trade-dependent occupations could escape this land-yield constraint and saw incomes
grow. Roy concludes that this caused the emergence of a middle class with no other significant effect
on income distribution.
 This rising inequality contrasts to the 30 years following the country’s Independence, when income
inequality was widely reduced and the incomes of the bottom 50% grew at a faster rate than the
national average.
 According to the report, since 1980, the richest 1% captured twice as much as the poorest 50% of
world population. In other words, since 1980, 27% of all new income worldwide was captured by the
richest 1%, while the poorest 50% captured only 13% of growth. The report was coordinated by
economists FacundoAlvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
 These figures are brought into sharp contrast considering the top 1% currently represents 75 million
individuals while the bottom 50% represents 3.7 billion individuals,” it said, adding that there have
been large shifts in the ownership of capital.


1.2 REASON OF INCOME INEQUALITIES:

 Growing economic inequality during the post globalization period has been noticed in India.

 The nature and extent of this inequality is not same that has been experienced by other developing
countries during the same period.

 In India the dividends of globalization and liberalization mostly concentrated in richer states (OECD
Report, 2011), while the Poorer and populous states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar are
faltering behind.

 To understand the reason behind this economic inequality, we need to go little deeper of the typology
of the jobs that have been generated in the process of globalization.

 Due to globalization incidence of informal economic relation has become more prevalent in India.

 What types of work this informal employment constitutes?

 It includes a number of home-based jobs, road side vending and hawking and contractual works.

 Rise in informal jobs and greater economic inequality are very often positively correlated (Jutting and
Laigesia, 2009).

 The reasons behind this rise in income inequality due to expanding informal jobs are:
(1) informal jobs always associated with low wage,
(2) these jobs are unstable in nature,
(3) such jobs are not at all supportive for accumulation of human capital and growth of career,
(4) Such jobs create a condition of “career entrapment” for the worker as he has to move only from one low-
paid job to another (OECD Report, 2011).

 Income inequality is the result of lower wage of a large section of workforce in India.
 Due to globalization, as Eric Maskin puts, the wage of skilled workforce has increased rapidly for the
growing global demand of their skill, but the unskilled section of the workforce is bound to taker lower
wage as there is less demand for the unskilled workers (Maskin, 2014)

 .For example, we may take the job of IT sector, where workers get higher wages for higher demand
(both national and international) of their skill.

 But a worker without IT skill will never be able to get better wage.

 It means globalization has pushed up the demand for skilled workers and thereby contributing to the
income inequality in a considerable way.

 Income inequality as a consequence of globalization can also be discussed from a different angle.
Globalization has changed the character of production of many goods and services.

 For example, a cell-phone (e.g. Nokia) now-a-days designed in one country, programmed in another
and assembled in a third country.

 This new trend of production is called internationalization of production (Maskin, 2014).

 This process of internationalization of production pushes the demand for skilled workforce, thereby
increasing the inequality of income between skill and unskilled workforce.

 Income inequality is also related to gender income inequality were mens are paid higher wage compare
to women.
1.3 CAUSES OF INCOME INEQUALITY

1. Inheritance:
Some persons are born with a silver spoon. Rich inheritance gives them a start in life and if they are
reasonably prudent, they keep up the lead. Some persons are born landless; others inherit a few acres and still
others thousands of acres. Parents of some persons die penniless or still worse die under debt passing the
burden of debt on to their children, while others leave huge cash balances for the benefit of their heirs. So long
as the system of inheritance lasts, inequalities are bound to be perpetuated.

2. System of Private Property:

Under the system of private property, a person is free to earn, free to save and free to own property. Once
acquired, property breeds further and there are large accretions thereto almost automatically. If there had been
no system of private property, people will altogether lose incentives to work and to save. Property is the very
basis or cause of inequality of incomes. First a man earns and acquires property; and then his property starts
earning. That is why some earn less and others more. Differences in property lead to differences in incomes.

3. Differences in Natural Qualities:

No two persons have the same natural talent. Some are more gifted than others. Persons who are endowed by
nature with superior intelligence, better physique and greater capacity for hard work must surpass others in the
race of life. Some inherit a feeble mind in a feeble body, and they naturally lag behind.

4. Differences in Acquired Talent:

It is true to some extent that environments make the man. Natural or inborn qualities are considerably
modified by environments. A child may be born intelligent but if he is not lucky enough to receive proper
education, the latent abilities remain undeveloped. On the other hand, a child of mediocre ability, if properly
nursed, brought up and educated, will more than make up for the lack of natural gifts.

There is no doubt that if one undergoes technical training of the right type after a course of general education,
his efficiency will improve. Commercial education may also improve efficiency and raise a person’s income-
making capacity. Differences in personal efficiency are thus an important cause of inequality of incomes.

5. Family Influence:
It is generally recognized that the job that a person gets is very largely determined by the family influence.
Ordinary graduates manage to get lucrative jobs through the influence of relations and friends, whereas
brilliant graduates without helpful contacts may have to be content with low-paid jobs. That is why unequal
incomes are earned by different persons. In this world, family contacts make a lot of difference to what people
earn.

6. Luck and Opportunity:

Some persons are lucky enough to get a good chance and they may make the most of it. Kennedy’s
assassination gave a chance to Lyndon Johnson. It sometimes happens that a person comes to know of a
vacancy and gets it. A business man happens to start business in a place which turns out to be one of very
favourable location.

It is sheer chance. It is well known that under-developed regions do not offer good opportunities for
employment, whereas the developed regions have ample opportunities. This is also an important cause of
inequality of incomes. These are some of the causes which give rise to inequality of incomes.

7. Unemployment:
The main reason for low level of income of the majority of Indian people is unemployment and
underemployment and the consequent low productivity of labour. Low labour productivity implies low rate of
economic growth which is the main cause of poverty and inequality of the large masses of people. In fact,
inequality, poverty and unemployment are interrelated. Since sufficient employment could not be created
through the process of planned economic development, it was not possible to increase the income levels of
most people.

8. Inflation:
Another cause of inequality is inflation. During inflation, few profit earners gain and most wage earners lose.
This is exactly what has happened in India. Since wages have lagged behind prices, profits have increased.
This has created more and more inequality. Moreover, during inflation, money income increases no doubt but
real income falls. And this leads to a fall in the standard of living of the poor people since their purchasing
power falls.

No doubt, inequality has increased due to rise in prices. During inflation workers in the organised sector get
higher wages which partly offset the effect of price rise. But wages and salaries of workers in unorganised
sectors (such as agriculture and small-scale and cottage industries) do not increase. So their real income
(purchase income) falls. This is how inequality in the distribution of income increases between the two major
sectors of the economy — organized and unorganized.
9. Tax Evasion:
In India, the personal income tax rates are very high. High tax rates encourage evasion and avoidance and give
birth to a parallel economy. This is exactly what has happened in India during the plan period. Here, the
unofficial economy is as strong as (if not stronger than) the official economy. High tax rates are responsible
for inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. This is due to undue concentration of incomes in a few
hands caused by large- scale tax evasion.

10. Regressive Tax:

The indirect taxes give maximum revenue to the government. But they are regressive in nature. Such taxes
have also created more and more inequality over the years due to growing dependence of the Government on
such taxes.

11. New Agricultural Strategy:

No doubt, India’s new agricultural strategy led to the Green Revolution and raised agricultural productivity.
But the benefits of higher productivity were enjoyed mainly by the rich farmers and landowners. At the same
time, the economic conditions of landless workers and marginal farmers deteriorated over the years. Most
farmers in India could not enjoy the-benefits of higher agricultural productivity. As a result, inequality in the
distribution of income in the rural areas has increased.
1.4 EFFECTS OF INCOME INEQUILITY

1. Health

If people are not healthy they will not work to their full productive capacity.

Ascertaining whether inequality is a direct cause of ill health (as opposed to merely being correlated with it) is
difficult. On balance, the research seems to indicate that inequality causes poor health. One possible
mechanism for this is through increases in stress, which is a known risk factor for many diseases.
Specifically, World Health Organization research shows that in Europe more unequal countries have poorer
mental health outcomes.

More simply, in most rich countries there are diminishing marginal returns to an individual’s expenditure on
health, so a transfer of funds from treating the rich to treating the poor would both reduce inequality and
improve the total health of the population.

2.Education

If children are less successful at school, they are less likely to become highly skilled workers. Their productive
capacity, and therefore the productive capacity of the economy, is diminished. OECD research concludes that
policies to improve high school and tertiary education completion rates also improve gross domestic product
per capita.

Inequality reduces performance because of its segregating effects. There is a good deal of evidence that
children’s school success depends at least partly on the interests and aspirations of their peers. The influence
of peers is greater than any school effects, including teacher quality. If schools are segregated, children from
socioeconomically disadvantaged households will mix with other disadvantaged children, and thus with
children who do not perform well at school. Segregation is more likely in an unequal society. The negative
effects of poor children associating with less gifted children are greater than any positive effects of affluent
children associating with more gifted children. So inequality may cause a net reduction in educational
attainment.

Unlike in health, a simple transfer of resources to poor schools may not be very effective in reducing
inequality. The research cited above suggests that unequal outcomes will persist to some extent as long as
there is residential segregation or parental choice of schools.
3. Economic growth

A more equal wage distribution encourages specialization in higher value-adding industries, while low wage,
low value-adding industries cannot compete.

Meanwhile, work by International Monetary Fund economists shows that ‘longer growth spells are robustly
associated with more equality in the income distribution’.

Thus inequality may have a generally slowing effect on economic growth.

4. Economic stability

A number of economists have argued that inequality leads to economic instability. One mechanism by which
this happens is that the rich consume a smaller proportion of their income than the poor. They save money
which people on lower incomes would spend. This leads to a reduction in aggregate demand, which in turn
leads to unemployment. In response, governments take measures to stimulate demand, such as lowering
interest rates. This feeds into asset bubbles—for example, unsustainably high housing prices.

Meanwhile, as inequality grows, individuals facing low or declining relative incomes maintain their
consumption through borrowing (financed by the savings of the rich). A very small rise in unemployment or
interest rates can lead to defaults on mortgages or consumer loans and can have catastrophic results.

There is some level of consensus that inequality in advanced countries helped cause the global financial crisis.

5. Poverty level is still high

The Committee's report estimated that there are over 340 million (approximately 34-37 crore) workers in the
unorganised sector in India. Out of this, women make up 11-12 crore. The unorganised workforce contributes
around 60% to the national economic output of the country.

Yet, in spite of their vast numbers, and their substantial contribution to the national economy, they are
amongst the poorest sections of our population.

According to the report card of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) for the period
April 2006 to April 2007, the scheme has not faired well especially due to lack of awareness.
The above-mentioned statistics present a different picture than what was being believed earlier that poverty
levels were falling rapidly and that per capita incomes had risen by more than 50% in the last six years. It
depicts stark differentials between rural and urban incomes and between the rich and the poor as well.

6. Lack of basic amenities

This glaring income inequality impacts access to education and health and affects the poverty-reducing impact
of a given amount of growth.

Increasingly, this gaping disparity in income, expenditure and savings patterns is not just between rural and
urban India but also between large and small cities.

Urban households, for instance, earn 85% more than rural ones, but spend three-quarter more and, as a result,
save nearly the double of what rural households do.

Much of this difference can be explained by differences in profession and education. Size of a city also makes
a great difference to the household income levels.

Unorganized sector work includes agricultural labour, construction workers on building sites, brick-kiln
workers, workers in various service industries ranging from transport and courier services to the hospitality
industry.

Low wages, long working hours, hazardous working conditions, lack of basic services such as first aid,
drinking water and sanitation at the worksite, child labour, sexual harassment characterise the unorganised
sector.

Unorganized workforce also does not have the benefit of laws such as the Minimum Wages Act or the
Factories Act.
1.5 Consequence of income inequality

Inequality of incomes leads to some very serious economic and social consequences:

(a) Class-conflict:
It has created two sections in society—the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-not’s—which are ever on the war path. This
has resulted in ever mounting social tensions and political discontent.

(b) Political Domination:

The rich dominate the political machinery, and they use it to promote their own exclusive interests. This
results in corruption, graft and social injustice.

(c) Exploitation:
The rich exploit the poor. The consciousness of this exploitation leads to political awakening and then
agitation and even political revolution. Thus inequality of incomes is an important cause of social and political
instability.

(d) Creation of Monopolies:

Unequal incomes promote monopolies. These powerful monopolies and industrial combines charge unfair
prices from the consumer? And crush the small producers. The bigger fish swallow the small fry.

(e) Suppression of Talent:

It is said that ‘slow rises merit by poverty depressed’. It is not easy for a poor man to make his way in life,
however brilliant he may be. It is a great social loss that brainy people without money are unable to make their
due contribution to social welfare.

(f) Undemocratic:
Democracy is a farce when there is a wide gulf between the rich and the poor. Political equality is a myth
without economic equality.

(g) Moral Degradation:

The rich are corrupted by vice and the poor demoralized by lack of economic strength. Thus inequalities spoil
the rich and degrade the poor. Vice and corruption rule such a world. The poor man finds it almost impossible
to regain the virtues of honesty and integrity. Human dignity is lost altogether.
 (h) Promotes Capital Formation:
However, there is one good which comes out of these inequalities of incomes and that is that it facilitates
savings. If the national income of the country is evenly distributed among all its citizens, it is clear that it will
be only thinly spread over the whole population. Everyone will have nothing left for saving. It is only when
income is unequally distributed that there are people who are so rich that in their case saving is automatic.

It is only a minority of the people who have the saving habit. To the rest if income comes, it is squandered
away. Under a system, where there are large accretions of wealth in certain patches, not only is the capacity
for savings greater, but the ability to invest and gain is also greater. There are people who save and turn their
saving into capital. Thus inequality of incomes helps capital formation in a country.
1.6 Gender pay gap in India

Introduction

 Gender pay gap in India refers to the difference in earnings between women and men in the paid
employment and labor market. For the year 2013, the gender pay gap in India was estimated to be
24.81%.

 Further, while analyzing the level of female participation in the economy, this report slots India as one
of the bottom 10 countries on its list.
 Thus, in addition to unequal pay, there is also unequal representation, because while women constitute
almost half the Indian population (about 48% of the total), their representation in the work force
amounts to only about one-fourth of the total.

1.Occupational segregation

The rate of female participation in the paid labor market is generally low, and is primarily concentrated in
rural areas in the agricultural sector.

In rural north India, it has been observed that labor is divided sharply on the basis of gender. Certain activities
in agriculture have been assigned specifically to women, like drying and storing the grain, while other tasks
like plowing and harvesting are only performed by men.

Female labor participation in India has been observed to be higher in sectors involving personal services and
care work, and is also higher in informal sectors, especially in agriculture.

2. Cultural barriers

While social and cultural norms vary from state to state within India, one commonality that has been observed
is the exclusion of women from the paid labor market and status based segregation of labor. Ironically, women
from higher castes faced more difficulty when they tried to obtain paid work, even if their survival depended
on it.

In interviews conducted with widows from rural North India, they stated that if attempts were made to seek
gainful employment outside their homes, they would be forced to give up their property rights and made to
leave the villages they live in, indicating that paid work was not a feasible option even to sustain themselves
due to the existing social norms.
Because childcare is viewed primarily as a woman's job, women often take part-time jobs or take time off
during their careers to care for their families. When women return to work after a break, they are paid lower
wages than their male colleagues.

Women employed full-time ordinarily already earned 34% less than men, but when compared to part-time
working women, the pay gap further increased as they earned almost 42% less than men. Additionally, even if
women do not have children, it has been observed that they still face pay discrimination as they are viewed as
potential mothers, who may require a break from work in the near future.

3. Education and training

The literacy rate for women in India is far lower than the rate for men, and it has been observed that many
girls drop out of school and fail to fully complete their education.

Investment in education and training has also been strongly in favor of men as they are brought up with the
expectation of being bread earners, and hence this investment is considered necessary for their success, while
women are instead viewed as "future homemakers" for whom education may not be as essential.

4. Unpaid work

According to the Human Development Report 1995, women spend about two-thirds of their working time on
unpaid work, while men spend only one-fourth of their time towards unpaid labor. It has been estimated in
India that International obligations

India has been a permanent member of the ILO Governing Body from 1922. In September 1958, India ratified
the C100 Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100), which addressed the issue of equal pay between
men and women for work of equal value.

This convention requires all member states to direct their national laws and policies towards guaranteeing
equal remuneration to all workers, regardless of gender. In an attempt to ensure compliance with this
convention and in response to the Report by the Committee on status of women in India, the government
enacted the Equal Remuneration Act.

5. Equal Remuneration Act, 1976

In 1976, the Equal Remuneration Act was passed with the aim of providing equal remuneration to men and
women workers and to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender in all matters relating to employment and
employment opportunities.
This legislation not only provides women with a right to demand equal pay, but any inequality with respect to
recruitment processes, job training, promotions, and transfers within the organization can also be challenged
under this Act.

However, its scope does not extend to situations where: (i) a woman is attempting to comply with the
requirements of laws giving women special treatment; and (ii) a woman is being accorded special treatment on
account of the birth of a child, or the terms and conditions relating to retirement, marriage or
death. Companies and individual employers can both be held accountable to maintain the standards prescribed
under this Act.

In various cases, the Supreme Court of India has also held that discrimination on the basis of gender only
arises when men and women perform the same work or work of a similar nature. However, it clarified that a
flexible approach is required to be taken while deciding which kinds of work may be similar by considering
the duties actually performed as a part of the job, and not the duties potentially capable of being performed.

over two-thirds of the current employment in India, but most of the work women contribute to this sector is
not accounted for or officially documented.

6. By education
The gender pay gap in India increases with an increase in educational qualifications. While comparing men
and women who had only completed high-school level education, it was observed that women earned 10.34%
less than men.

Women who had gone to college for four to five years or who had received advanced degrees earned around
30% less than their male counterparts. With an increase in the level of education, where women had obtained
a Master's degree of a PHD equivalent, it was observed that the gender pay gap ranged between 44% to 46%.
CHAPTER 2
 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A large number of studies relating to gender inequalities and women empowerment across the world have
been emerged during the past few decades. Although the role of women in national development has long been
legitimized by international development agencies, their participatory role, structural issues and the
methodology of planning for their empowerment and its measurement are not only debatable but also have
received the attention of many. Few studies have been attempted to address these issues of structural
inequalities and empowerment of women in India and abroad. This chapter presents the reviews of some of the
significant studies, the methodology adopted and the summary of findings relating to women and development
and the suggestions thereon.

Samba Siva Rao Psupulet et-al (2010) in a study on ―Temporal and Regional Changes in the Role of
Empowerment of Women on Her Reproductive Choices in India‖ has investigated whether the link between
empowerment of women with the demographic issues like number of children, every born ideal number of
children and son preference etc., varies across regions and over time. The study utilized the data collected by
National Family Health Survey-II (NFHS-II) (conducted during 1998- 1999) and National Family Health
Survey –III (NFHS-III) (conducted during 2005-2006). Both Bivariate and Multivariate analyses that include
cross tabulation, multivariate regression analysis and Logit Regression analysis were used to understand the
impact of empowerment of women on her reproductive choice and her ability to achieve desired fertility.

Rumki Gupta (2010) has undertaken a study on - Empowerment and Gender Difference in Education Status‖
in West Bengal. For the purpose of data & analysis, the districts of West Bengal were divided into four
stratum viz., i) Kolkata, ii) Jalpaiguri&Malda, iii) Howrah &Hoogly and iv) Medinipur&Bankura. Fifteen
Boys‘ Schools and ten Girl‘s Schools were selected randomly from each selected district except from
Medinipur and Kolkata. For these two districts, twenty four boys‘ schools and twelve girls‘ schools around ten
students were selected. Thus in all, study was based on the data collected from 1530 students (887 were boys
and 643 were girls) selected from the selected schools of West Bengal. A simple percentage analysis and chi-
square test were performed to find out the empowerment and gender inequalities status of women these
regions. It was concluded in the study that the gender bias appears to be a major constraint for acquiring
education. Possible reasons could be the pressure for socialization, job possibility through education etc., are
more intense for the boys than girls the study added.

RisikatOladoyin S. Daueda (2009) has undertaken a study on the ―Women‘s Education and Household
Food Security: Analysis of Survey Results from South Western Nigeria‖. The aim of the study was to explore
the nature of the relationship between women‘s education and household food security in South Western,
Nigeria. The study was conducted from four local government areas viz., Somolu, Mainland, Eti- Osa and
Apapalogam governmental areas in South Western Nigeria, during May to June 2008. The study was based on
the primary data collected from the sample of 500 women aged between 18-60 years in four local
governmental areas of South Western Nigeria. Bivariate analysis, likelihood ratio and chi-square test were
used. The study revealed that majority of the respondents have formal education and there exists a significant
relationship between educational level of women and household food security. Policy recommendations
offered by the government are aimed at facilitating women‘s education at the different socio-economic strata
of the society.

PurusottamNayak et-al (2009) in yet another study on ―Women Empowerment in Assam has attempted to
analyze the status of women and their empowerment in terms of various indicators such as access to education,
employment, household decision making power, financial autonomy, freedom of movement, exposure to
media, political participation, experience of domestic violence etc. The study was conducted in three regions
of Assam, namely; Lower Assam, Central Assam and Upper Assam. The study was based on the secondary
data collected from different sources at the disaggregated level. The study reveals that development process in
the state is not gender neutral; women enjoy quite inferior status as compared to the average women in India.

Imran Sharif Chaudhry et-al (2009) in a study ―The Determinants of Women Empowerment in Southern
Punjab (Pakistan): An empirical Analysis‖ was made an attempt to examine the determinants of women
empowerment in remote areas of Pakistan. The study was conducted in Dera Ghazi Khan District of Southern
Punjab in Pakistan. The results of the study showed that women empowerment is considerably influenced by
education, access to media, socio-cultural norms of the community, job of women and household participation
rate. Apart from the conventional variables, the extent of knowledge on Islamic women empowerment is also
considered significant on the overall empowerment of women. The study was concluded with the statement
that the millennium goal of women empowerment can be achieved only when all concerned bodies are worked
in cooperation and understanding of factors included in the model.

Golam Mostofa et-al (2009), in their study on ―Women Empowerment in Patrichal Bangladesh‖ made an
attempt to measure the women‘s empowerment in Bangladesh by constructing three indices of specific
dimensions viz., economic decision-making, household decision-making and freedom of movement index.
The data extracted from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey - 2004 (BDHS) conducted by the
National Institute of Population Research and Training (NIPORT) of the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, Bangladesh were utilised for analysis. Information were also collected from 11,440 married women
at the age of 10 - 49 and 4,297 men at the age of 15 - 54 selected from 10,500 households of 361 sample points
(clusters) in 122 urban areas and 239 rural areas of Bangladesh.
Ajeet Kumar and Nalin Singh Negi (2009), in their study on ―Impact of Household Decision Making
Power on Women Empowerment in India: Evidences from NFHS-3 Survey‖ has i) investigated the percentage
of women involved in the decision making power in the context of the socio-cultural, socio-economic and
health aspects of their own lives, ii) the assessed the regulatory factors or ability to formulate the decision
making power and iii) made comparative account of women‘s empowerment and its associated factors through
comparison between working (paid and un-paid workers) and non-working women. The data collected from
NFHS-3 in 2004-2005 were used for analysis. The study revealed that the women‘s autonomy through the
decision making power on different aspects of life such as household, access to money, self-health care and
freedom of movements to relative‘s house or to the market. It covers women of reproductive age (15-49) of
different states and zones of India. The study also provides socio-cultural and socio-economic variations in the
level of empowerment.

Emily Hannum et-al (2009) in a study on ―Family Sources of Educational Gender Inequality in Rural
China: A Critical Assessment‖, has investigated the family sources of gender gap in education in Rural
Northwest China. The results of the study showed that at ages 9-12, rural girls in Gansu compared well to boys
in terms of parental economic investments and provision of learning environment, own achievement,
industriousness, academic confidence, and alienation from school. A significant gap favouring boys emerges
in mother‘s calling on children for chores and in mothers‘and children‘s own aspirations. In explaining the
gender gaps that do emerge, few mothers think that girls are less capable or worthy of investment than boys,
but substantial proportions of mothers expect future support from sons, and some mother’s links this
expectation to the view that investing in girls is a waste, the study observed. However, more of these
hypothesized mechanisms of gender inequality fully explain away the modest gender gap that emerges in the
attainment of schooling 7 years later, because some early experiences favour boys while other favour girls.

ShahnajParveen (2007) in his study on ―Gender Awareness of Rural Women in Bangladesh‖, made an
attempt to determine the social Status of Rural Women and their Level of Gender Awareness. The study was
conducted in three villages viz., Sutiakhali, Bijaoynagar and South Charkalibari villages in Mymensingh
district of Bangladesh. The results of the study were based on the data collected from 156 rural women
through group discussion and personal interview from the above three villages in Mymensingh district. The
study reveals that personal income and physical beauty of rural women are the most important factors
determining a higher social status; while women with distressed conditions including mental and physical
disabilities were found to have a lower social status. Among ten pre-selected attributes relating to gender, the
respondents were able to recognize gender discrimination with respect to domestic violence, community
participation, inheritance of property rights, timing of marriage and divorce rights. However, they failed to
recognize disparity regarding payments of dowry during marriage, undervaluation of own work and sex bias in
terms of age, education, food and health.

Radhakrishana et-al (2008) in their study on ―Empowerment of Women in Sujala Watershed Programme
through Income Generating Activities‖ made an attempt to know the extent of benefits derived from income
generating activities by SHG members of Sujala Watershed Programmes and to assess the empowerment level
of women in Sujala Watershed Programme. The study was undertaken during 2005 in the Uthanur sub
watershed of Mulbagal taluk in Kolar district of Karnataka state. The study was based on the data collected
from100 respondents who were selected randomly from the 20 SHG‘s in eight villages of Mulbagal taluk in
Kolar district. The study was concluded with the observation that most of the SHG members had taken up
subsidiary enterprises like dairy, petty business, sheep rearing, goat rearing, tailoring and got maximum
income from petty business. After joining the SHG all the members started saving for the future. Majority of
the respondents were fully employed and started self help employment. This indicates that most of the SHGs
formed under Sujala Watershed Programme are exclusively women. It has empowered them socially and
economically through income generating activities to such an extent that they have started asserting their
genuine demands collectively. Therefore, the implementing officials should plan more number of income
generating activities by linking the SHGs with banks so, that they can derive more benefits out of them and
there by individuals can progress through groups.

PurusottamNayak et-al (2008) in their study on ―Women Empowerment in India‖ made an attempt to
analyse the status of women empowerment in India using various indicators like women‘s household decision
making power, financial autonomy, freedom of movement political participation, acceptance of unequal
gender role, exposure to media, access to education, experience of domestic violence etc. The study was based
on the secondary data collected from different sources in India. The study revealed that women in India are
relatively disempowered and they enjoy somewhat lower status than that of men, in spite of many efforts
undertaken by the Government of India. Gender gap exists in the case of access to education and employment.
Household decision making power and freedom of movement of women vary considerably with their age,
education and employment status. It is found that acceptance of unequal gender norms by women are still
prevailing in the society. More than half of the women believe wife beating to be justified for one reason or
the other. Fewer women have final say on how to spend their earnings. Control over cash earnings increases
with age, education and with place of residence. Women‘s exposure to media is also less relative to men.
Rural women are more prone to domestic violence than that of urban women. A large gender gap exists in
political participation too. The study concluded with an observation that access to education and employment
were only enabling factors to empowerment, achievement towards the goal however, depends largely on the
attitude of the people towards gender equality.
Muzamil Jan (2008) has studied ―The Impact of Education on Decision Making Power among Women‖ in
the Srinagar district of Jammu & Kashmir. The main objective of the study was to assess the impact of
education on women‘s decision-making power and to evaluate the status of women‘s decision making power
on their empowerment, fertility and children rearing practices. The study was based on the primary data
collected from 100 married women respondents, selected from Srinagar district. The simple statistical
techniques viz., percentage, chi-square, degrees of freedom and level of significance were employed to find
out the impact of education on women‘s decision-making power. The study showed that with the increase in
the educational status of women, their egalitarian and feminine decision-making power in their families
decreases. Significant differences were observed between qualified, literate and illiterate women with respect
to their decision-making power for family planning, control on unnatural abortions, health, education of
children, participation in local government and choice for income generating activities.

HaimantiMukhopadhya (2008) in a study on ―The Role of Education in the Empowerment of Women in a

District of West Bengal, India: Reflections on a Survey of Women‖ has explored the role of education in the
empowerment of women in the district of Malda of West Bengal. The study was conducted in the rural and
urban villages of Malda district. The data were collected through personal interview method. 204 sample
women from 42 villages of Malda district were selected for the study through random sampling method. The
study concluded that women‘s status was inferior to men‘s in Malda District. Women face discrimination
within families as well as in society, where the society maintained double standards in the case of education,
marriage, spouse relationships, domestic violence, laws of patriarchal society, property laws, dowry system,
sexual morality sexual harassment as well as discriminatory social stigma and also has less recognition and
respect for women‘s work.

Protap Mukherjee et-al (1998) in a study on - Women‘s Empowerment and Gender Preference for Children:
A Study on Four Metropolitan Cities in India‖ have made an attempt to identify the association between
indirect and direct indictors of women‘s empowerment in four metropolitan cities; viz., Delhi, Mumbai,
Calcutta and Chennai. The main objectives of the study are i) To measure the level of women‘s empowerment
in four metropolitan cities in India, ii) To study the level of women‘s empowerment by different background
characteristics, and iii) To examine the effect of women on gender bias in education and future fertility
preferences. Data has been obtained from National Family Health Survey – II (NFHS-1998-99), comprising of
6395 eligible women in the age group of 15-49 years selected from the 4 metropolitan cities of India. Stratified
random sampling technique was employed to select samples from where the data on education, occupation are
exposure to mass media, women‘s access, control over resources,
OIawepo J.A. and Jekayinfa A.A (1999) in a study on ―Education as a Mean of Empowering Nigerian
Women to Participate Actively in Politics and Government‖ have examined the main-socio- cultural
constraints inhibiting the participation of women in politics and government. The study also highlights the
relevance and importance of women education to the empowerment of women for political participation.
Finally, the study recommends for some measures which, if taken, will make formal and non formal education
contribute more to the empowerment of women for political participation.
CHAPTER 3
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.0 Income Inequality

Income inequality is the unequal distribution of individual income across the various participants in an
economy. Income inequality is often presented as per individual’s capacity to earn income. In India most of
the income is held on to the richest which almost holds 58.4% of the wealth were as the poor are getting more
poorer. Here the income is distributed on the basis of Education, Profession, Sector, Size of the company, etc.
Inequality of Income is also due to gender bias, inflation, time base, etc.

2.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of the study are in number they could be stated as follows:

a. To Analyze Income Inequality.

b. To know the methods of income inequality in India.

c. To understand the pattern of income distribution in India.

d. To understand the individual behaviour on income.

e. To know the income gaps between rich and poor.

These objectives would prove themselves to be instrumental in carrying on a worthwhile discussion on

an analysis of income inequality in India. However, to carry on this study with a scientific outlook it is
necessary to formulate a hypothesis based on the information available on the analysis of income inequality in
India.

2.2 HYPOTHESIS

Income inequality is an analysis of the current income distribution based on the income-distribution-
related information the people have at hand; it reflects a subjective judgment of the people of the income
distribution status. The people’s subjective judgments are influenced by neighbors, colleagues, friends and the
news media.
2.3 METHODS OF THE STUDY

Though this study is purely fact finding in nature, a lot of secondary data and primary data is required for its
successful completion. Hence it is necessary to explain in details the methods by which these data are sought
to be collected.

2.4 COLLECTION OF DATA

PRIMARY DATA

This research study is purely relied on the primary data. This data is totally collected by firsthand. The
primary data required for the study could be obtained mostly from the most common techniques such as
surveys, questionnaire, and experiments.

SECONDARY DATA

This research study is purely based on secondary data. The secondary data required for the study could be
obtained mostly from books, magazines and newspapers. Through internet the data can be collected by report
papers by research scholars, economists, public records and statistics, etc. These information would make the
analysis comprehensive and through going in every aspects.

2.5 STATISTICAL TOOLS

General problems could be subjected to scientific treatment only by taking resource to certain time
honored statistical tools of analysis. As far as the present study is concerned the following statistical tools
are worth trying.

2.6 TABLES

This is the major statistical tool meant for the effective interpretation of any set of data; they would give any
casual reader a brief of the research projectthesis. An analysis of income inequality could be clearly interpreted
with the help of Tables. The investigator does not want to consider any other tools for further interpretation.

2.7 THE USE OF THE STUDY

a. It would be of very great use to understand the pattern of income distributed to people on various aspects.
b. The study would give any casual reader of the project an exposure to the ways and means of income gaps
between the rich and poor.
c. The project reader can also get an idea about how the income is separated individual.
d. Numerous innovative studies would speak off in days ahead about the analysis of income inequality in
India.

2.8 LIMITATIONS
Though this study is purely explorative in nature, it is brought with a number of limitations. The most
outstanding among them could be listed as follows.
a. Adequate secondary data are not available regarding an analysis of income inequality in India.
b. Collection of primary data was difficult to execute and preparation of questionnaire was quite a task.
c. This study concentrates more on the income gaps between rich and poor.
d. This study on income inequality is not mostly discussed openly in India.
e. This study does not focused to the problems of income distribution.

2.9 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

a. It would pave the way for the growth of similar studies in the area of “A study on income inequality in
India”.
b. It would create awareness among the people on the income distributed to them.
Finally it can be used as a basic for numerous scientific and innovative studies on the performance of
IncomeInequality in the days ahead.

2.10 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Income inequality is one issue which Indians shy away from; we do not want to accept that it is there, and that
economic reforms have actually widened the wedge.

We need to standardized the basic wage policy so that people can fullfil there basic needs such as food , cloth
and shelter.
CHAPTER 4
 ANALYSIS ON INCOME INEQUALITY IN INDIA

4.0 Inequality measures can be relative, absolute, or intermediate. A relative measure is one whose value
remains unchanged when all incomes in an income distribution are raised or lowered by the same proportion.
An absolute measure is one whose value remains unchanged when all incomes in a distribution are raised or
lowered by the same absolute amount.

4.1 Income Inequality up both in rural and urban areas

 Income inequality has increased in both rural as well as urban areas.

 According to Gini co-efficient thee has been increase in income inequality in rural India by 13% and
in Urban India by 15%.

 India Financial Protection Survey (IFPS) has covered 63.016 households in depth across the country.

 There was increase in inequality because of disparity income, expenditure and saving pattern.

 Urban income data shows that the size of a town/city makes a great difference to the household income
level.

 Thus income share is double than its population share.

 In India the income inequality is as follow

STATES URBAN INCOME % OF URBAN

POPULATION

JAIPUR 0.99% 1.05%

LUCKNOW 0.93% 0.83%

CHANDIGRAPH 7% 0.3%
4.2 Facts on Income Inequality in India

1) India added 17 new billionaires last year, raising the number to 101 billionaires.

2) Indian billionaires’ wealth increased by INR 4891 billion —from INR 15,778 billion to over INR 20,676
billion. INR 4891 billion is sufficient to finance 85 per cent of the all states’ budget on Health and Education.

3) 73 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent, while 67 crore Indians who
comprise the poorest half of the population saw one percent increase in their wealth.

4) In the last 12 months the wealth of this elite group increased by Rs 20,913 billion. This amount is
equivalent to total budget of Central Government in 2017-18.

5) 37% of India’s billionaires have inherited (family) wealth. They control 51 per cent of the total wealth of
billionaires in the country

6) Only four women billionaires in India and three of them inherited family wealth

7) Between 2018 till 2022, India is estimated to produce 70 new millionaires every day

8) Number of billionaires has increased from only 9 in 2000 to 101 in 2017

9) 51 billionaires out of the total 101 are 65 years or above and own Rs 10,544 billion of total wealth.
If we assume that in the next 20 years, at least Rs 10,544 billion will be passed on to the inheritors and on that
if 30% inheritance tax is imposed, the Government can earn at least Rs 3176 billion. Rs 3176 billion sufficient
to finance 6 crucial services—Medical & Public Health, Family Welfare, Water & Sanitation, Housing, Urban
Development and Labour&Labour Welfare in all States.

10) Over the next 20 years, 500 of the world’s richest people will hand over $2.4 trillion to their heirs – a sum
larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.

11) In countries like India and the Philippines, at least one in every two workers in the garment sector are paid
below the minimum wage.

12) It would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a
leading Indian garment company earns in a year.

13) It would take around 17.5 days for the best paid executive at a top Indian garment company to earn what a
minimum wage worker in rural India will earn in their lifetime (presuming 50 years at work)

14) It would cost around Rs 326 million a year to ensure 14,764 minimum wage workers in rural India were
paid a living wage. This is about half the amount paid out to wealth shareholders of a top Indian garment
company.

15) India’s top 10% of population holds 73% of the wealth.

4.3 Inequality of income in India

For some 60 years, the only reliable information about India’s inequality was coming from the annual National
Sample Survey conducted from 1951.

NSS is one of the most venerable surveys in the world of poverty and income distribution statistics. India
started fielding it soon after its independence: the survey was supposed to track how the new government
fought poverty, to provide information on caste differences, rural-urban gap, caloric intake, especially of the
poor and many other statistics.

Since its main concern was with poverty, the decision was made to survey consumption, that is, how much
people actually consume (do they have sufficient number of calories) rather than income (how many rupees
they earn).

For all these decades since 1951 NSS was the key instrument that allowed researchers from India and the rest
of the world as well as Indian policymakers to know what is happening with India’s population.

India could thus boast to have had a longer series of annual surveys than most rich countries (that often
launched their similar surveys in the 1960s).

But in addition the survey also benefited from some reflected glory which had to do with the ideals and hopes
raised by the Independence and thus it had a bit of this Third World-Bandoeng Summit-Mahalanobis glow
always attached to it.

But the problems started in the 1990s when the survey numbers began to diverge more and more from
National Accounts statistics: NSS was showing consistently lower rates of growth, and higher poverty than
many people thought it should be given India’s fast growth.

This led to the famous Great India Poverty debate in which participated Angus Deaton, Amartya Sen, Jean
Drèze, T.N. Srinivasan, S. Subramanian, Martin Ravallion and many others. Several representative articles are
given here and here and here.

The gap between the slow moving survey mean and much faster changes in per capita GDP was also explained
by the failure of NSS to capture top incomes.

The top incomes may have been pulling up the mean (presumably reflected in GDP per capita) and if surveys
continued, partly by design and partly by the reluctance of the rich to participate, to be focused on the bottom
of the income distribution, that could explain the rising gap between NSS and national accounts.
And if indeed that was the reason, or one of the reasons, then another unpleasant conclusion imposed itself:
inequality in India may be (far) higher than implied by NSS data.

And indeed, as the graph below shows, NSS kept on producing a fairly stable consumption Gini (calculated
here on household per capita basis) over several decades, with only a small increase in inequality after India’s
sharp turn toward capitalism in the early 1990s. That Gini, ranging between mid- and higher-30s, made India
inequality look about the same as in developed countries.

But until recently we had no other reliable and nationally-representative survey to confront NSS with. Now,
thanks to the joint work by University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Research in New Delhi,
we have (harmonized by LIS), the first income based surveys of Indian population for 2004 and, just released
by LIS, another same survey for 2011.

And the results are very different from NSS’s. First, Indian Gini is remarkably consistent in both 2004 and
2011 and is (on per capita basis) 51 Gini points. This is at the level of Latin American countries and is some
15 points (or almost 40% ) higher than the Gini’s calculated from NSS. Thus a key question is immediately
asked: is India’s inequality more like Latin American? NSS was saying for years that it is not; the India
Human Development Survey (IHDS) argues it is.

For 2011, I have both micro data from NSS and micro data from IHDS and when I compare
income/consumption by each percentile (note that these are entirely different people though), the results do
make sense. For the lowest percentiles, consumption is about twice income, and everybody up to the
33rd percentile consumes more than their income (which you would expect in a poor environment). After that
point, consumption consistently and monotonically falls short of income (that is, there is saving), so much that
among the top 5%, income is twice as high as consumption (saving rate is 50%). Overall, the mean per capita
income from IHDS is 47 percent higher than the mean per capita consumption from NSS, and as we have said,
Gini is some 15 points higher.

This “reasonableness” of the data, and the absence of discontinuities when comparing income and
consumption leads one to believe that it is possible that both NSS and IHDS provide accurate information
(with likely underestimation of top-end consumption and income), but that income distribution in India is
much more unequally distributed than consumption.

So if we compare India with other countries that use income surveys, this is how it looks (see the figure
below). India seems slightly more unequal than Brazil, and more egalitarian than only South Africa.
There are many other issues that are worth exploring here, in particular if we want to look more carefully at
the consistency between the two surveys, but I would like to end by considering the role of the new income
survey for India from an unusual angle.

As mentioned before, since NSS was the only game in town, all our global poverty and inequality statistics
were done using NSS. Now, if we replace NSS with the new income survey as I have done for the global
inequality calculation for the year 2011 (unpublished), you may expect that the greater inequality revealed by
IHDS would push global inequality up, especially since India is such a populous country. Right?

Wrong.

What happens is that global inequality goes down by approximately 1 Gini point since the higher income
levels implied by IHDS push Indians toward the middle of the global income distribution and more than offset
the contribution to higher global inequality that comes from the stretched-out Indian distribution. Thus,
somewhat paradoxically, a global implication of a new, and I think more reasonable, approach of viewing
India as a country with Latin American levels of income inequality is that global inequality, as calculated so
far, might have been overestimated.

4.4 The Truth about Income Inequality in India

It is impossible to know as income and wealth data of the well-heeled are either grossly inadequate or
far from reliable
Like a recurring rash, a little war of words has broken out in the media and Twitterverse about the extent of
inequality in India and whether it is growing.

The catalyst this time is the publication of James Crabtree’s book The Billionaire Raj. The same thing
happened last year when Luke Chancel and Thomas Piketty published their paper ‘Indian Income Inequality,
1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?’

Both are solid contributions that agree on one thing — economic inequality in India is very high and
increasing because of the rise of a super-wealthy class. As a result, inequality of income in India is the highest
it has been in the modern period. Roughly the same conclusions can be drawn from the regular reports on
wealth that come out of Credit Suisse and Oxfam.
Predictably, there are intellectuals who deny this. They include influential people across ideological lines, like
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, JagdishBhagwati, and Surjit Bhalla.

The denials generally come in two forms. First, there is distraction: inequality is not important in India; look at
poverty instead, or satisfaction surveys, or anything other than media exaggerations. In short, don’t look here,
look elsewhere.

Second, there is quibbling over methodology. The methods used by those who find high and increasing
inequality are said to be problematic. Using “proper” methods, the argument goes, it can be shown that
inequality in India is low to moderate and increasing slowly, if at all.

Given the breadth of these issues, it is impossible to know the truth about inequality in India — how much
there is and whether it is increasing — because data do not exist to measure it and probably won’t for a very
long time.

There are no government data on income and utterly inadequate data on wealth. The most credible data show
very high and increasing inequality, at levels and rates that are among, if not, the highest in the world. Even
these, the more reasonable calculations, underestimate the extent of income and wealth inequality in India.

The main reason we do not know the true level of inequality is that the upper tail of the income/wealth
distribution in India is inscrutable. Surveyors are never able to enter the houses and gated apartments in which
the upper and proto upper class live and ask them about their income or wealth. Even if by some miracle some
survey did manage to do so, there is no reason to expect that they will be told the truth. Therefore, all
arguments on inequality based on survey data are futile, like measuring the depth of an ocean with a dipstick.
Tax data do provide some information, but they cover a small proportion of the population and are notoriously
prone to…let us say, “understatement.” Since the extent of inequality in any society is driven by the heft of the
upper tail, the fact that there is little reliable information on it means that we are in the dark about the truth of
inequality in India.

Glaring limitations
Consider a few examples of the limitations of the data we fight over. First of all, the government of India does
not collect income data. It collects expenditure data. That is, not how much people earn, but how much they
spend. For the 2011-12 round (the latest for which data are available), the highest spending group in the NSSO
sample was, understandably, the top five per cent of urban India. The expenditure of this highest-spending
group averaged ₹1.23 lakh per year (less than $2,300). This is patently absurd.

For income, the only reliable nationwide data are believed to be those collected by the India Human
Development Survey (IHDS). In the IHDS 2004-05 survey, the individual with the highest income out of
about 43,000 families earned less than ₹22 lakh per year ($48,000 at the time). This, too, is not believable. It
seems obvious that the IHDS survey missed the top one to two per cent of earners. The NSSO expenditure
surveys missed even more, perhaps the top five per cent entirely.
The wealth data are just as problematic. They come from the All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS)
of the NSSO. There is a big problem with how the AIDIS values land, which makes up 85 per cent of wealth
according to their calculations, but let us not get into that here. Let us focus on the fact that India’s official
wealth survey has no information on India’s wealthy.

For example, in the period that the Indian stock market boomed (the last decade), the AIDIS data show that the
weight of shares/stocks actually went down to 0.13 per cent (one-tenth of one per cent) of total wealth in its
survey sample. This is simply not credible.

Given that the market capitalisation of all stocks on the BSE had almost equalled the country’s gross domestic
product in early 2018 (₹135 trillion in stocks compared to ₹150 trillion in GDP), the AIDIS sample clearly
missed the entirety of the upper and proto upper class; that is, people who own stock.

Despite that, the calculations of wealth inequality by outfits like Oxfam and Credit Suisse are among the
highest in the world. If the income and wealth of the total population are unknown, it is inevitable that those of
its sub-populations (the religions, castes, and tribes) are also unknown. Which means that decades of social
policy and conflict on reservations are based on little to no information on their material effects.

Unanswered questions
An explanation is needed. Why would a nation that appears to care much for economic and social inequality
— a concern that is demonstrated openly in its policies and politics — care so little to find out how much
inequality there is or whether its supposedly progressive redistributive policies are working?

That is, whether reservations and other social policies are doing the job they are meant to do? Whether the
benefits of economic growth are reaching all social groups more or less equally? Whether the post-
liberalisation growth of the economy has been “inclusive?”

The fact that we do not know the answers to these questions raises the larger question: Why do we not know
the answers? Why remain in this state of ignorance? What purpose or whose agenda does this ignorance
serve? Is there a deep conspiracy at work or is there something about the nature of information or the nature of
politics that explains this curious absence of what should be vital political information?
4.5 Gender pay gap scenario daunting in India, women get paid 20% less than men

Women in India earn 20 per cent less than men, indicating that gender plays an important parameter while
determining salaries in India, says a report.

According to the latest 'Monster Salary Index' (MSI), men earned a median gross hourly salary of Rs 231,
compared to women, who earned only Rs 184.8.

Though on a year-on-year basis, the gender pay gap has narrowed by about five percentage points from 24.8
per cent in 2016, the report said gender pay gap widens as one gains in work experience.

As per the report, men with 0-2 years of experience, earned 7.8 per cent higher median wages than women,
and those with 6-10 years of experience earned 15.3 per cent more.

Men with 11 and more years of experience earned 25 per cent higher median wages than women, it added.

However, there is a marginally inverted pay gap in the experience group of 3-5 years, where women are
earning more.

Monster Salary Index (MSI) is an initiative by Monster India in collaboration with Paycheck.in (managed by
WageIndicator Foundation) and IIM-Ahmedabad as a research partner.

The analysis is based on the WageIndicator data-set covering the period of 3 years, from January 2015 to
December 2017.

Monster.com also carried out a Women of India Inc survey, capturing responses of about 5,500 working
men/women.

As per the survey, a majority of respondents (69 per cent) said gender parity needs to be a top priority for
organisations as only 10 per cent organisations have a robust gender diversit ..
4.6 How does Income Inequality affect economic growth?

The relationship between aggregate output and the distribution of income is an important topic in
macroeconomics (Galor 2011).

The role that income inequality plays in economic growth has also received quite a bit of attention in policy
circles and the press recently.

For instance, the World Bank Group has included among its key global objective for development the
eradication of extreme poverty and boosting the incomes of the bottom 40% of developing countries.

The IMF has weighed in with a discussion on the role of income distribution as a cause and consequence of
economic growth.

In a recent paper (Brueckner and Lederman 2015), we provide estimates of the within-country effect that
income inequality has on aggregate output.

Our empirical analysis starts from the premise that the effect of changes in income inequality on GDP per
capita may differ between rich and poor countries.

This premise is grounded in economic theory.

In a seminal contribution, Galor and Zeira (1993) proposed a model with credit market imperfections and
indivisibilities in investment to show that inequality affects GDP per capita in the short run as well as in the
long run.

Galor and Zeira’s model predicts that the effect of rising inequality on GDP per capita is negative in relatively
rich countries but positive in poor countries. We test this prediction by introducing in the panel model an
interaction term between income inequality and countries’ initial (i.e. beginning of sample) GDP per capita.

How large are the effects?

Our empirical analysis shows that for the average country in the sample during 1970-2010, increases in
income inequality reduce GDP per capita.

Specifically, we find that, on average, a 1 percentage point increase in the Gini coefficient reduces GDP per
capita by around 1.1% over a five-year period; the long-run (cumulative) effect is larger and amounts to about
-4.5%.
To be clear, this finding implies that, on average, increases in the level of income inequality lead to lower
transitional GDP per capita growth. Increases in the level of income inequality have a negative long-run effect
on the level of GDP per capita.

We document the robustness of this result to alternative measures of income inequality, alternative income
inequality data sources, splitting the sample between pre- and post-1990 period (end of the Cold War), and
restricting the sample to countries located in Latin America and the Caribbean or Asia.

While the average effect of income inequality on GDP per capita is negative and significantly different from
zero, it varies with countries’ initial income level.

In an econometric model that includes an interaction term between initial GDP per capita and income
inequality, the coefficient on the interaction term is negative and significantly different from zero at the 1%
level.

Quantitatively, the size of the coefficient on the interaction term implies that differences in initial income
induce a substantial effect on the impact that changes in income inequality have on GDP per capita.

For example, at the 25th percentile of initial income the predicted effect of a 1 percentage point increase in the
Gini coefficient on GDP per capita is 2.3% (with a corresponding standard error of 0.6%); at the 75th
percentile of initial income the effect is -5.3% (the corresponding standard error is 0.8%).

The estimates from the interaction model thus suggest that in poor countries, increases in income inequality
raise GDP per capita while the opposite is the case in high- and middle-income countries.

Effects of inequality on human capital

Additional evidence that our empirical results are in line with Galor and Zeira’s (1993) model comes from the
response of investment and human capital.1

Our panel estimates show that within-country increases in income inequality significantly increase the
investment-to-GDP ratio in poor countries but decrease it in high- and middle-income countries.

Furthermore, within-country increases in income inequality significantly increase human capital (measured by
the average years of schooling and share of the population with a secondary and tertiary education) in poor
countries. On the other hand, in high- and middle-income countries increases in income inequality reduce
human capital.
Identification

Identification of the causal effect of income inequality on aggregate output is complicated by the endogeneity
of the former variable.

Income inequality may be affected by countries’ GDP per capita as well as other variables related to deep-
rooted differences in their geography and history.

We address this issue by estimating a panel model with country and time fixed effects. We instrument income
inequality with variation in that variable not driven by GDP per capita building on the work of Brueckner
4.7 Economic inequality in India and the world

Inequality measures can be relative, absolute, or intermediate.

A relative measure is one whose value remains unchanged when all incomes in an income distribution are
raised or lowered by the same proportion.

An absolute measure is one whose value remains unchanged when all incomes in a distribution are raised or
lowered by the same absolute amount.

The French economist Serge-Christophe Kolm observed that in a period of labour unrest in the late 1960s,
French workers agreed to an across-the-board increase of 13% in all remuneration.

It was only later that they realized that there was a specific sense in which this arrangement could increase
inequality among wage earners.

Imagine two employees with remuneration of 100 francs and 1,000 francs, respectively, before the wage hike.
The difference in their remuneration is 900 francs. After the wage hike, their remuneration becomes 113 francs
and 1,130 francs, respectively, and the gap between these increases from 900 francs before the hike to 1,017
francs after the hike!

In the presence of income growth, relative measures tend to behave like “rightist" measures, and absolute
measures like “leftist" measures, as Kolm put it.

He, therefore, saw the case for more “moderate", “centrist/intermediate" measures, which register an increase
in value when all incomes in a distribution are raised equi-proportionately, and a decline in value when all
incomes are raised equally.

These are what one may call income-centrist measures. An analogous problem is encountered with a
reckoning of inequality in the presence of population changes.

Most extant inequality measures are population-relative, in the sense that when the numbers of persons at all
income levels are raised equi-proportionately, the value of the inequality index remains unchanged.
In contrast, a population-absolute index would register a k-fold increase in its value for a k-fold replication of
the population at each income level.

Population-intermediate measures, which avoid the “extreme values" of both relative and absolute indices,
would typically register, in the presence of equi-proportionate increases of population at all income levels, a
less-than-proportionate increase in inequality.

There is a strong case, from the perspectives of both logical and ethical acceptability, for employing
comprehensively intermediate (that is, income-cum-population-intermediate) measures of inequality in
empirical work.

The predominant mainstream practice, however, is to employ strictly relative measures.

One such measure is the Gini coefficient of inequality. What happens when we replace the relative Gini with
the intermediate Gini coefficient?

It is instructive to consider this question in the context of economic inequality in India and the world as a
whole.

In India, we do not have systematic data on the distribution of personal incomes, though we do have data, from
the periodic surveys conducted by the Central Statistical Office’s National Sample Surveys, on the distribution
of consumption expenditure.

If we look at data from the 1970s to the 2010s, we find that the relative Gini had displayed a moderately
rising trend in urban India and no significant trend in rural India so that, given that the rural population
predominates, the overall all-India trend is not an alarmingly increasing one.

This has served as a basis for neoconservative commentators to claim that growth in India has not been
seriously non-inclusive, and has also been good for poverty reduction.
Such an assertion misses the point that a greater emphasis on redistribution would have secured further
reductions in poverty than has been the case with the jobless, trickle-down growth that the country has seen in
the last three decades.

It also misses the point that the trend in the intermediate Gini coefficient is a clearly increasing one for both
rural and urban India.

This trend is particularly and severely apparent in the over-time distribution of household wealth.

Exactly the same sorts of results hold for the world as a whole, as revealed by the contrast in the over-time
behaviour of the relative and intermediate Ginis for global income.

From the late 1980s to the late 2000s, the global relative Gini has remained roughly constant, as revealed in
the important work of experts like BrankoMilanovic of the City University of New York, whereas the global
centrist Gini has registered a rising trend.

Both diagnosis and policy prescription are dependent on the findings from measurement.

Yet, if there is one thing which measurement teaches us, it is that its underlying conceptual basis is no
bedrock of value-free certainties.

On the contrary, measurement is shot through with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty.
As the logician Frank Ramsey, who died tragically young at the age of 28, said: “We can make several things
clearer, but we cannot make anything clear."

One thing which is reasonably clear though, despite protocols of measurement which tell us otherwise, is that
inequality in the world is increasing.

Why we must do something to stop this is a subject we won’t even get around to discussing if we keep
denying that it is happening.

Meanwhile, the coexistence of poverty as widespread destitution and affluence as concentrated obscenity is
moral and political grotesquery that bodes ill for the prospects of our country’s continued democratic
functioning.
4.8 India’s rising income inequality is taking the shine off its growth story even in world’s eyes

Spectacular economic growth over the past three decades has made India a global economic powerhouse.
Between 1990 and 2016, India’s economy grew at a compound rate of around 7% in current dollars. The
Indian economy is now the third largest in the world by purchasing power parity after China and the United
States.

Slow trickle: India’s wealth is concentrated with 80% held by 10% of the population. The first decile controls
a negative percentage due to debt amounting to US$21 billion. Source: Oxfam Briefing Paper: An Economy
for the 99%

The surging economic growth has improved living conditions of its citizens, but these improvements were not
uniformly distributed among India’s diverse population. Despite being among the richest countries in the
world, India has attracted negative attention in recent years as the second most unequal country in the world,
after Russia.

According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute, the top 1% of India’s population owns nearly 60% of its
wealth, trailing Russia, where the top 1% owns 74% Like the Gini index which measures income/wealth
distribution in society, the Credit Suisse Index estimates concentration of wealth among top wealth and
income holders. The factors affecting wealth/income concentration include economic growth rate,
demographic trends, savings rates, globalization, inheritance and government policies.

Since 1990, the per-capita gross domestic product has increased almost six times – from $1,130 to $6,572.
Life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, sanitation, mean years of schooling and female literacy
registered significant improvements for the population of more than 1.3 billion. In all these areas,
improvements were better than in its two large South Asian neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In India, the upper classes were the main beneficiary of the nation’s surging economic development and
poverty rates are also significantly lower among the upper caste Hindus rather than the Hindu other backward
classes, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and Muslims. One third of Muslim and Hindu scheduled
castes and tribes are in poverty compared to 10% of the upper castes Hindu. Altogether, 28% or around 360
million Indians are living in conditions of severe poverty.

Two extremes

While economic growth is absolutely crucial in raising living standards of India’s vast population, the
distributional effects of economic growth, as measured by income distribution, play a significant role in
determining the long-term development trends and socio-economic well-being of the citizens. India is one the
richest countries in the world, and yet, the average Indian is relatively poor as a result of highly-skewed
income distribution.

According to the latest data from Credit Suisse and Oxfam, the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the
country’s wealth. At the other end, the poorer half jostles for a mere 4.1% of national wealth. Even more
strikingly, during the period of India’s rapid economic growth, the rich have been the greatest beneficiaries.
Between 2000 and 2016, the share of India’s richest 1% increased from 36.8% over 50%. The rising income
inequality has developmental implications – leading to slower poverty reduction and undermining
sustainability of economic growth.
Growing problem: Inequality is increasing in India and elsewhere around the globe. Source: Manas
Chakravarty and IMF

Increasing wealth concentration is also reflected in income growth. Between 1988 and 2011, the incomes of
the poorest 10% of Indians rose by $29, or around ₹2,000, at an increase of 1% per year. In the same period,
the income of the richest 10% increased by almost ₹40,000, at the rate of 25% per year. The reasons for this
inequality include crony capitalism and corporations that exploit employees at lower rungs to maximise
salaries and dividends for executives and shareholders. As the French economist Thomas Piketty shows in his
seminal book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the surest way to grow wealth is to possess it.

The rapid rise of income inequality is reflected in changes in the more traditional Gini Index. Between 1990
and 2013, the increase in the Gini coefficient was one of the highest not only in Asia, but also in the world.
Interestingly, in the period when India’s Gini coefficient was rising, it was declining in other highly unequal
regions such as Latin America and Africa.

The state of the middle class

Higher income inequality impedes class formation and poverty reduction. In particular, the growth of the
middle class plays a significant role in strengthening democratic structures and cultures. But rising income
inequality in India is hampering the formation and growth of the middle class. If one were to take an income
of $10-$20 per day in 2011 purchasing power parity as an indicator of the middle class, then India has not
done as well as Malaysia, Indonesia and China in growing its middle class. According to the International
Monetary Fund, the higher income inequality has lowered the effectiveness of growth to combat poverty and
significantly slowed the building of a sizeable middle class in India.

Economic test: Compared with other emerging economies in Asia, India struggles to build a middle class.
Source: Manas Chakravarty and IMF

Rising income inequality has developmental implications. The super-rich can avoid taxes by using innovative
schemes to shelter their wealth and manipulate the political system without repercussions. This impedes the
government’s ability to raise revenues that contribute to slower poverty reduction and also adversely impacts
social spending to reduce social inequalities of health, education and employment. India already fairs poorly in
this area. Currently, 3% of the GDP goes towards education and only 1.3% towards health. By comparison in
China, percentage of GDP allocated to education and health is 4.3 and 5.4, respectively.

Economic inequality can adversely exacerbate a range of social problems, including inter-group relations and
conflict, social cohesion and violent crime. Inequality hurts not only the poor but everyone with increased
crime and increased workplace accidents. India ranks 125 out of 159 countries in the Gender Inequality Index.
In a range of indicators including mean years of schooling, gross national income per capital and labor force
participation rates, Indian women lag significantly behind Indian men. Cumulative effects of entrenched
inequality will worsen their deprivations. Inequality is also affecting India’s urban landscape. Recent studies
show that class, ethnicity and caste inequalities represent the growing axis of residential segregation in
contemporary urban India.
CHAPTER 5
 COLLECTION OF DATA ON INCOME INEQUALITY WITH THE HELP OF
QUESTIONNAIRE

 Collection of data is totally based on primary data collection.

 It is prepared to understand the people’s view on income inequality.
 This questionnaire is put forth for the people according to gender and age to understand
the proper views of different decades.
 Mostly the age group pattern difference is for 10years.
 The questionnaire also includes on gender pay gap between men and women.
 It also includes some effects and co-relation to income inequality such as inflation,
education, size of company, sector, profession, etc.
 It also includes the question about payment such as how it will increase : age,
experience, training, educational degree .
 Finally in the end of the questionnaire, it is asked to the people that whom they will
complain about income inequality.
2. GENDER:

Gender

49%

Male
Female
51%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis the percentage of response is more of female as compare to male.

GENDER PRECENTAGE

MALE 48.90

FEMALE 51.10
3. AGE GROUP :

AGE GROUP

7%

11%

less than 25 year

9%
25 to 35
35 to 45
45 and above
73%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis people follow in these age criteria of income inequality in India:

73% of the people come under the criteria of less than 25 years.

9% of the people come under the criteria of 25 to 35 years.

11% of the people come under the criteria of 35 to 45 years.

7% of the people come under the criteria of 45 years and above.

4. Difference of income can be co-related to:

Co-relation

11%

35% Education
16%
Profession
Sector
Size of the company

38%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis difference in income can be co-related to profession are as follows:

35% of the income differenceis co-related to education.

38% of the income difference is co-related to profession.

16% of the income difference is co-related to sector.

11% of the income difference is co-related to size of the company.

5. Does pay increases due to:

Payment
2%

17%
3%

Age
Experience
Training
78% Educational degree

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis payment of the people pay increases due to experience are as follows:

2% of pay increase due to age.

78% of the pay increase due to experience.

3% of the pay increases due to training.

17% of the pay increases due to educational degree.

6. Does inflation effect income?

Inflation

13%

Yes
No

87%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis inflation effect income of the people are as follows:

87 % of the people think that inflation effect income inequality.

13 % of the people do not think that inflation effect income inequality.

7. If the work is distributed equally between men and women , do you think the paid wage
should be equal?

Income Distribution

11%

Yes
No

89%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per data analysis the work distributed equally between men and women the paid wage
should be equal are as follows:

89% of the people votes for equal wage paid between men and women when work distributed
equally.

11 % of the people votes for unequal wage paid between men and women when work
distributed equally.
8. Do you think women gets more income as compare to men?

Women

30%

Yes
70% No

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis the people think women gets less income as compare to men are as
follows:

30% of the people have observed that the paid income is more for women then the paid
income of men.

70 % of the people have observed that the paid income is less for women then the paid income
of men.
9. Why men earn more, is it fair

Men

26%

Yes
No
74%

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis the people think that men should not earn more and it is not fair are as
follows:

26 % of the people think that men should earn more and its fair.

74 % of the people think that men should not earn more and its not fair.
10. To complain on unequal pay what you will prefer

Complaint

25%
Meeting with company
authority
12% Complain to trade union
63%

Complain to government

ANALYSIS OF DATA

As per the data analysis most of the people suggest meeting with the company authority are as
follows:

63 % of the people suggest meeting with the company authority for inequality of income.

12 % of the people suggest to complain to trade union.

25 % of the people suggest to complain to government.

CHAPTER 6
4.1 FINDINGS

 Income inequality in India shows large income gaps between rich and poor.
 It reflects the wide income distribution to the poor.
 Women are paid less wage as compare to men.
 38 % of the income difference is co-related to profession.
 78% of the pay increase due to experience.
 87 % of the people think that inflation effect income inequality.
 89% of the people votes for equal wage paid between men and women when work
distributed equally.
 70 % of the people have observed that the paid income is less for women then the paid
income of men.
 74 % of the people think that men should not earn more and its not fair.
 63 % of the people suggest meeting with the company authority for inequality of
income.
4.2 SUGGESTIONS

 To know the exact data of individual income there should be survey on income earned by the
individual and not on expenditure.
 To reduce the gap between rich and poor the government should increase the tax on luxuries products.
 The gender pay gap can also be reduce through proper training to women and by preparing an
agreement to women (time, holidays, work, etc.)
 Government should make an law for every individual to file income tax complusary even if the income
is less than the criteria prescribed.
 If men and women are working in same position in any firm they should be paid equally, this will
reduce the income gap between gender.
 Income inequality can be reduce if there will be proper education and training provide to the people.
4.3 CONCLUSION

 According to the survey of income inequality it is observed that men are paid more
wage as compare to women.
 According to the survey people think inflation effect their income which leads to income
inequality.
 Here rich are getting richer and poor are getting more poorer because rich have the
proper knowledge and training as compare to poor.
 Income inequality is seen more in rural areas of the Indian country.
 QUESTIONNAIRE

1. NAME :

2. GENDER:

 MALE
 FEMALE

3. AGE GROUP:

 Less than 25 years

 25 to 35
 35 to 45
 45 and Above

4. Difference in income can be co-related to :

 Education
 Profession
 Sector
 Size of the company

5. Does pay increases due to :

 Age
 Experience
 Training
 Educational degree

6. Does inflation effect income ?

 Yes
 No
7. If work is distributed between men and women , Do you think the paid wage should be equal?

 Yes
 No

8. Do you think women gets more income as compare to men ?

 Yes
 No

9. Why men earn more, is it fair?

 Yes
 No

10. To complain on unequal pay what will you prefer ?

 Meeting with company authority

 Complain to trade union
 Complain to government
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