Saturday, July 04, 2015

Kerala and Inequality

The state of Kerala in India has 6.29 million families with 4.43 million families, or 70 per cent, having a highest earning household member with salary less than Rs5,000— a sharp reminder of income inequality in the state, which boasts of a trillion rupees in annual remittance coming in from expatriates.

Only in about 770,000 families, or 12 per cent of the total number of families, the monthly income of the highest earning household member is above Rs10,000. This is better than the national average. Across India, only 8 per cent of families have a highest earning member drawing over Rs10,000 per month.

Slightly over 40 per cent of the families in Kerala’s rural areas are landless, and they survive by taking up manual casual labour. Kerala is above average on a national scale, where more than half of rural India does not own any land.

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