IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v387y2008i1p270-276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A power law tail in India's wealth distribution: Evidence from survey data

Author

Listed:
  • Jayadev, Arjun

Abstract

This study uses survey data from India to examine the top percentile of the wealth distribution in India. Using nationally representative samples from two years, 1991 and 2002, a power law tail is found with a Pareto exponent ranging between 1.8 and 2.4. The tail is examined for three specific groupings: households in the rural areas, households in the urban areas and all households. The distribution of top households also appear to be regionally concentrated with states having the highest number of households in the top 1% in 1991 also generally having the highest number in 2002 as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayadev, Arjun, 2008. "A power law tail in India's wealth distribution: Evidence from survey data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(1), pages 270-276.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:387:y:2008:i:1:p:270-276
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2007.08.049
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437107009429
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2007.08.049?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sinha, Sitabhra, 2006. "Evidence for power-law tail of the wealth distribution in India," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 359(C), pages 555-562.
    2. Drăgulescu, Adrian & Yakovenko, Victor M., 2001. "Exponential and power-law probability distributions of wealth and income in the United Kingdom and the United States," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 213-221.
    3. Klass, Oren S. & Biham, Ofer & Levy, Moshe & Malcai, Ofer & Solomon, Sorin, 2006. "The Forbes 400 and the Pareto wealth distribution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 290-295, February.
    4. Adrian Dragulescu & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money," Papers cond-mat/0001432, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2000.
    5. Hideaki Aoyama & Yuichi Nagahara & Mitsuhiro P. Okazaki & Wataru Souma & Hideki Takayasu & Misako Takayasu, 2000. "Pareto's Law for Income of Individuals and Debt of Bankrupt Companies," Papers cond-mat/0006038, arXiv.org.
    6. Foster, Andrew D & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1996. "Technical Change and Human-Capital Returns and Investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 931-953, September.
    7. Levy, Shiki, 1998. "Wealthy People and Fat Tails: An Explanation for the Lévy Distribution of Stock Returns," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt5zf0f3tg, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    8. Coelho, Ricardo & Néda, Zoltán & Ramasco, José J. & Augusta Santos, Maria, 2005. "A family-network model for wealth distribution in societies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 353(C), pages 515-528.
    9. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay & Esther Duflo, 2004. "Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1409-1443, September.
    10. Kaivan Munshi & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2005. "Why is Mobility in India so Low? Social Insurance, Inequality, and Growth," CID Working Papers 121, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    11. A. Drăgulescu & V.M. Yakovenko, 2001. "Evidence for the exponential distribution of income in the USA," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 20(4), pages 585-589, April.
    12. Levy, Moshe & Solomon, Sorin, 1997. "New evidence for the power-law distribution of wealth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 90-94.
    13. Joseph Persky, 1992. "Retrospectives: Pareto's Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 181-192, Spring.
    14. Anirban Chakraborti & Bikas K. Chakrabarti, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money: How saving propensity affects its distribution," Papers cond-mat/0004256, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2000.
    15. Chatterjee, Arnab & K. Chakrabarti, Bikas & Manna, S.S, 2004. "Pareto law in a kinetic model of market with random saving propensity," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 335(1), pages 155-163.
    16. Arnab Chatterjee & Bikas K. Chakrabarti & S. S. Manna, 2003. "Pareto Law in a Kinetic Model of Market with Random Saving Propensity," Papers cond-mat/0301289, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2004.
    17. A. Chakraborti & B.K. Chakrabarti, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money: how saving propensity affects its distribution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 17(1), pages 167-170, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brzezinski, Michal, 2014. "Do wealth distributions follow power laws? Evidence from ‘rich lists’," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 406(C), pages 155-162.
    2. Wildauer, Rafael & Heck, Ines & Kapeller, Jakob, 2023. "Was Pareto right? Is the distribution of wealth thick-tailed?," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 38597, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    3. Edouard Augustin Ribes, 2021. "What is the impact of introducing productivity tools for wealth management professionals? A case study for the french market," Working Papers hal-03494465, HAL.
    4. Wildauer, Rafael & Kapeller, Jakob, 2019. "Rank Correction: A New Approach to Differential Nonresponse in Wealth Survey Data," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 26010, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    5. Chatterjee, Arnab & Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Ghosh, Asim & Chakraborti, Anirban & Nandi, Tushar K., 2016. "Invariant features of spatial inequality in consumption: The case of India," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 442(C), pages 169-181.
    6. Wang, Yuanjun & You, Shibing, 2016. "An alternative method for modeling the size distribution of top wealth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 457(C), pages 443-453.
    7. Jakob Kapeller & Rafael Wildauer, 2019. "Rank Correction: A New Approach to Differential Non-Response in Wealth Survey Data," ICAE Working Papers 101, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    8. Wildauer, Rafael & Kapeller, Jakob, 2022. "Tracing the invisible rich: A new approach to modelling Pareto tails in survey data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    9. Jakob Kapeller & Rafael Wildauer, 2019. "A Comment on Fitting Pareto Tails to Complex Survey Data," ICAE Working Papers 102, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    10. Aloys Prinz, 2016. "Do capitalistic institutions breed billionaires?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 1319-1332, December.
    11. Benedikt Fuchs & Stefan Thurner, 2014. "Behavioral and Network Origins of Wealth Inequality: Insights from a Virtual World," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-13, August.
    12. Anindya S. Chakrabarti & Arnab Chatterjee & Tushar Nandi & Asim Ghosh & Anirban Chakraborti, 2018. "Quantifying invariant features of within-group inequality in consumption across groups," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 13(3), pages 469-490, October.
    13. Tomson Ogwang, 2011. "Power laws in top wealth distributions: evidence from Canada," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 473-486, October.
    14. Ogwang, Tomson, 2013. "Is the wealth of the world’s billionaires Paretian?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(4), pages 757-762.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patriarca, Marco & Chakraborti, Anirban & Germano, Guido, 2006. "Influence of saving propensity on the power-law tail of the wealth distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 369(2), pages 723-736.
    2. Aydiner, Ekrem & Cherstvy, Andrey G. & Metzler, Ralf, 2018. "Wealth distribution, Pareto law, and stretched exponential decay of money: Computer simulations analysis of agent-based models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 490(C), pages 278-288.
    3. Max Greenberg & H. Oliver Gao, 2024. "Twenty-five years of random asset exchange modeling," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 97(6), pages 1-27, June.
    4. Boghosian, Bruce M. & Devitt-Lee, Adrian & Johnson, Merek & Li, Jie & Marcq, Jeremy A. & Wang, Hongyan, 2017. "Oligarchy as a phase transition: The effect of wealth-attained advantage in a Fokker–Planck description of asset exchange," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 476(C), pages 15-37.
    5. D. S. Quevedo & C. J. Quimbay, 2019. "Piketty's second fundamental law of capitalism as an emergent property in a kinetic wealth-exchange model of economic growth," Papers 1903.00952, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2019.
    6. Adams Vallejos & Ignacio Ormazabal & Felix A. Borotto & Hernan F. Astudillo, 2018. "A new $\kappa$-deformed parametric model for the size distribution of wealth," Papers 1805.06929, arXiv.org.
    7. Coelho, Ricardo & Richmond, Peter & Barry, Joseph & Hutzler, Stefan, 2008. "Double power laws in income and wealth distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(15), pages 3847-3851.
    8. Costas Efthimiou & Adam Wearne, 2016. "Household Income Distribution in the USA," Papers 1602.06234, arXiv.org.
    9. Brzezinski, Michal, 2014. "Do wealth distributions follow power laws? Evidence from ‘rich lists’," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 406(C), pages 155-162.
    10. Vallejos, Adams & Ormazábal, Ignacio & Borotto, Félix A. & Astudillo, Hernán F., 2019. "A new κ-deformed parametric model for the size distribution of wealth," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 514(C), pages 819-829.
    11. Chakrabarti, Anindya S., 2011. "An almost linear stochastic map related to the particle system models of social sciences," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(23), pages 4370-4378.
    12. Néda, Zoltán & Gere, István & Biró, Tamás S. & Tóth, Géza & Derzsy, Noemi, 2020. "Scaling in income inequalities and its dynamical origin," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 549(C).
    13. N. Bagatella-Flores & M. Rodriguez-Achach & H. F. Coronel-Brizio & A. R. Hernandez-Montoya, 2014. "Wealth distribution of simple exchange models coupled with extremal dynamics," Papers 1407.7153, arXiv.org.
    14. AlShelahi, Abdullah & Saigal, Romesh, 2018. "Insights into the macroscopic behavior of equity markets: Theory and application," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 505(C), pages 778-793.
    15. Zoltan Neda & Istvan Gere & Tamas S. Biro & Geza Toth & Noemi Derzsy, 2019. "Scaling in Income Inequalities and its Dynamical Origin," Papers 1911.02449, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2020.
    16. Chakrabarti, Anindya S. & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2010. "Statistical theories of income and wealth distribution," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-31.
    17. Tian, Songtao & Liu, Zhirong, 2020. "Emergence of income inequality: Origin, distribution and possible policies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 537(C).
    18. Ghosh, Asim & Chatterjee, Arnab & Inoue, Jun-ichi & Chakrabarti, Bikas K., 2016. "Inequality measures in kinetic exchange models of wealth distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 451(C), pages 465-474.
    19. Carmen Pellicer-Lostao & Ricardo Lopez-Ruiz, 2010. "Transition from Exponential to Power Law Distributions in a Chaotic Market," Papers 1011.5187, arXiv.org.
    20. Bagatella-Flores, N. & Rodríguez-Achach, M. & Coronel-Brizio, H.F. & Hernández-Montoya, A.R., 2015. "Wealth distribution of simple exchange models coupled with extremal dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 417(C), pages 168-175.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:387:y:2008:i:1:p:270-276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.