Global Report on Income Inequality | 11 Jul 2019

International Labour Organisation in its Labour Income Share and Distribution dataset has revealed that top 10% earners in India made over 69% of the country’s labour income in 2017, in contrast to 0.25% made by the bottom 10% earners.

• Labour Income Share and Distribution dataset developed by ILO offers two new indicators for major trends in the world of work, at national, regional and global levels:
  
  • One provides the first internationally comparable figures of the share of Gross Domestic Product that goes to workers rather than capital through wages and earnings.
  • The second looks at how labour income is distributed.

Key Findings

• The share of national income going to workers is declining, from 53.7% in 2004 to 51.4% in 2017.
• Worldwide, the income share of the middle 60% workers grew to 30.2% in 2017 from 23.6% in 2004, while the share of the richest 20% of workers came down by 6.8 percentage points.
• Countries where top earners saw their share of national pay rise by at least one percentage point include Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States
• Poorer countries tend to have much higher levels of pay inequality, something that exacerbates the hardships of vulnerable populations.
  
  • In Sub-Saharan Africa, the bottom 50% of workers earn only 3.3% of labour income, compared to the European Union, where the same group receives 22.9% of the total income paid to workers.

Income Inequality in India

• Pay inequality has remained consistent in India since 2004, although it has reduced at the global workplace in the last 13 years.
• ILO report has found that between 2000 and 2017, income inequality rose six times.
• India’s richest 10% own as much as 80.7% of the country’s total wealth, while 90% own only 19.3% of its total wealth