India’s wealth Gini hits 0.74: UBS economist explains why the rich still don’t feel rich

India’s wealth Gini score stands at 0.74, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2026, close to the United States’ 0.77 and well above mainland China’s 0.60. On a scale where 0 indicates perfect equality and 1 indicates extreme inequality, India’s figure marks it as fairly unequal even as its overall wealth grows.

The inequality sits alongside strong headline numbers. India added 31,033 new US-dollar millionaires in 2025, more than twice mainland China’s 14,079, with India’s millionaire count rising 3.4% during the year against China’s 0.3%. UBS notes India is among the few markets where median wealth has climbed roughly 20% since 2020, while many other countries saw it fall.

Yet UBS chief economist Paul Donovan notes in the report that people tend to judge their wealth relative to others rather than in absolute terms, so many Indians don’t feel rich even when they are objectively better off than before. For many, someone else in the neighbourhood always seems to be one notch higher on the social-mobility ladder.

Part of the picture lies in how Indian wealth is structured. Only 25.8% of India’s gross personal wealth sits in financial assets, against 78.9% in the US and 51.9% in mainland China, with most Indian household wealth instead concentrated in real estate and gold. An RBI-linked household finance study found the average Indian household held 77% of its assets in real estate and just 5% in financial assets.

India’s household debt, at 8.2% of gross wealth, is lower than mainland China’s 10.6%, the US’s 10.9% and the UK’s 20%. That relatively low leverage is reassuring on its own, but combined with the thin financial-asset share, it points to wealth that remains concentrated and largely outside market instruments — a pattern policymakers are watching as they look to deepen capital markets.