According to the World Inequality Report 2022 (WIR 2022), India and Brazil are countries with ‘extreme’ inequality amongst low- and middle-income group countries. China is slightly better as it is characterised by only ‘high levels’ of inequality. India is also amongst countries that experienced ‘spectacular’ increase in inequality along with USA and Russia. Amongst countries in South and Southeast Asia, the ratio of the income of the top 10 percent to the bottom 50 percent is 22 for India which is much higher than 17 for Thailand, a military dictatorship. Globally, the entire drop in growth in the share of income going to the bottom 50 percent of the population due to COVID-19 in 2020 was because of South and Southeast Asia, particularly India. When India was removed from the data set, the share of income going to the bottom 50 percent was found to increase slightly in 2020. Carbon Inequality The inequality in income and wealth naturally translates into carbon inequality that arises from differences in consumption. Within India, the national average per person emission was about 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO 2 ). The middle 40 percent emitted about 2 tCO 2 per person, the bottom 50 percent about 1 tCO 2 and the top 10 percent about 8.8 tCO 2 per person in 2019. This pattern is not unique to India. Globally, on average each individual emitted just over 6.5 tCO 2 in 2021. In 2019, the bottom 50 percent of the world population emitted only 1.6 tCO 2 per person accounting for 12 percent of emissions while the middle 40 percent emitted 6.6 tCO 2 per person accounting for about 40 percent of total emissions. The top 10 percent emitting 31 tCO 2 per person accounted for 47.6 of total emissions and the top 1 percent or about 77.1 million people emitting 110 tCO2 accounted for 16.8 percent of emissions. The top 0.1 percent or just 7.7 million people emitted 467 tCO 2 per person and the top 0.01 percent or just 770,000 people emitted a staggering 2531 tCO 2 per person in 2019.
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