We all have serious misconceptions about the income distribution in India. I ran a survey last week and compared the answers with real data

Check out the survey here: https://forms.gle/noyd9GPMeY2YyaQi7

The gaps between perception and reality are stunning. A thread with some highlights
/1

What's the average household monthly income of the top 1% of the country? Most people think its ₹5L or more.

Reality: it is 85k.

88% of you are in the top 0.5% of the country, and almost none of you know this fact /2

The average monthly household income in India is 22k. For a family of 4.7 members.

People in metros don't realize this because, in the metros, we don’t really have the “rest of India”. 87% of all the people living in metros are from the top 40%. We never meet the bottom 60%. /3

Speaking of metros vs rest-of-India: In metros, 78% of households with loans have home-loans. For all of India, that number is just 18%

Agricultural loans are the #1 reason for loans in Bharat. The #2 reason is "log kya kahenge" (loans for weddings and other family functions) /4

What fraction of India uses firewood for cooking? Check out this graph. /5

For more details, other surprising statistics, sources of data, and more see the rest of my analysis:
https://futureiq.substack.com/p/misconceptions-about-income-distribution /6