New Delhi: India ranks eighth among the ten most unequal countries in the latest edition of the Global Wealth Report, 2025, by UBS, a Swiss financial services firm. While media reports have focussed on the rise in the number of Indian millionaires, it is inequality that emerged at the centre of the country’s wealth story in 2024, finds the report’s latest edition.Inequality overshadowed the wealth story in India over 2024, because of the high levels it has reached. According to the report, India is now as unequal as the United States – a country not just far wealthier on the whole but also better off on most social parameters.The Gini coefficient, a mathematical model, is traditionally used to measure inequality by quantifying how evenly wealth or income is distributed within a population. Zero in the model represents perfect equality and 1 represents maximum inequality. India and the United States had the same Gini coefficient of 0.74.This score underlines how concentrated wealth has become in India, even as sections of the population experience economic progress – like the millionaires, who now number 9,17,000 (39,000 were added in 2024).Besides, while inequality fell significantly in the United States over 2019-2024, in India it actually rose over the same period.India is among the most unequal countries in the report’s sample of 56 nations and among the 15 highlighted in the report where inequality increased over 2019-2024. Inequality, according to UBS’s research, fell in Finland and the United States the most, and rose in the Netherlands and Austria the most.Inequality rose in India between 2019 and 2024, finds the Global Wealth Report, 2025 by UBS.But there is more sobering data for India. In 2024, India was among the markets where average wealth per adult, measured in US dollars, declined in real terms. The fall of just over half a per cent might appear modest, but it came at a time when many economies were posting gains.Indeed, real average wealth shrank in France, Mexico and South Africa as well, yet India’s high level of inequality means a small affluent segment remains relatively insulated from the contraction. At the same time, more Indian households saw their gains erode due to currency fluctuations or inflation.Median wealth calculations in the report, however, tell a more complex story. In real terms and measured in local currency, India’s median wealth rose by nearly 6.6% in 2024. This is not just a stark contrast from the fall in wealth in average terms. It also suggests that a section of the population is experiencing gradual improvements – while the average falls.It also means that the gap between most households and the wealthiest is widening. There were similar divergences in France and Spain but, once again, India’s starting point of high inequality would imply that its problem is more acute.The millionaire population only serves to add another layer to this picture of inequality. In 2024, India saw a 4.4% increase in the number of dollar-millionaires: around 39,000 new entries to the list. This means wealth creation is taking place at the top, but reinforcing the imbalance highlighted by the Gini coefficient.The Gini coefficient does not paint a rosy picture for India and several other economies. Source: Global Wealth Report, 2025Put simply, there were more high-net-worth individuals in India at the start of 2025, but they coexisted with a larger population whose conditions are improving – but at a far too slow pace. And the wider this gap grows, a bigger share of India’s population will be left farther behind.The Global Wealth Report’s findings make it clear that India’s challenge is not only to generate wealth but to ensure it is shared more evenly.What’s true of India is true on a global scale, too. As the report notes, “At the end of 2024, the share of the world’s wealth held in emerging markets is close to 30%, a slight decrease from the year before. This level has essentially been unchanged since 2017. Looking ahead, we expect no significant movement in this metric over the next five years either.”In other words, the world is as unequal as it was eight years ago: the wealthier nations are capitalising on previous gains to grow richer, while others like India – minus its millionaires, of course – struggle or play an endless game of catch-up.The UBS report points out that one reason for this “steadiness” – the 30-70 split in wealth share between the developed and emerging economies since 2017 – is that the “rapid development phase” typical of “early stages of industrialisation” is over. But it’s not all bleak for the world. The only wealth bracket that has been “hemorrhaging members” since 2000, the report finds, is the lowest one, from zero to US $10,000.In India’s context, another key factor to note is that financial assets barely account for 20% of gross wealth – the figure is 80% in Sweden, and at similar levels in Taiwan and Israel. This means that properties – rather than portfolios – make up most of the wealth Indians possess. Property is less flexible than financial assets, and its value can grow over time, but not necessarily because it was put to productive use. Property can also be a marker of inequality, since prices in urban areas grow disproportionately to those in rural or semi-urban areas.This tells us that financialisation is a moving target in India – a lot more needs to be done for people to have both incomes (with savings to invest) and trust in financial markets. Stocks, mutual funds and pensions are still not as widespread as they ought to be for faster generation of wealth at the population level.The Global Wealth Report, 2025, shows India’s lw level of financial assets, another marker of inequality.This brings us to the average wealth per adult metric, also provided in the UBS report.In real terms and measured in local currency, India entered 2025 with a lower average wealth per adult than it had exactly five ago. The report places India among the roughly one-third of countries in its 56-nation sample where the average wealth per person actually declined since 2020.It means that household balance sheets did not keep pace with the cost of living – nor could they enjoy the fruits of economic expansion, wherever they fell.Exchange rates, population growth, inflation and other such factors are typically behind this trend. But wealth also depends on government policies that target “fixing” the concerns that repress incomes (even – or especially – on average, by targeting those at the bottom levels of income). This assessment in the report is yet another warning signal that India’s economic policy cannot focus on growth rates alone.Growth in average wealth in India masks its lopsided nature: The wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top. Global Wealth Report, 2025Average, median and total personal wealth vary over time due to a mix of factors. As the report clarifies, none of these are perfect choices when measuring the status of a population. However, taken together, they can give a clearer picture of the missing piece in the economic puzzle of India or any country.The Global Wealth Report, 2025, ranks India at 14th place among the top 21 nations in terms of dollar-millionaires. Source: UBSTo sum up the key findings related to India recorded in the UBS report, which mentions the country 18 times:India’s real average wealth per adult declined in 2024 compared with 2023. India remained in the negative territory when wealth was measured in local currency.India also had lower average wealth in real terms, in local currency, at the start of 2025 than five years ago. Only India’s median wealth grew 6.6% from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2024 – a rather astounding jump compared with the 0.5% drop in average wealth – but this is because median wealth does not average out incomes or wealth over the population.In terms of the increase in millionaires over 2023-2024, India ranked fourth, after Turkiye, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. India also has 3.4% of the world’s personal wealth (the United States has close to 35%, China, 20%).“Wealth” in the UBS report is defined as the value of financial and real assets, principally housing, owned by private individuals, minus their debt (which it found was below 10% in India, ). Privatepension fund assets are included, but not entitlements to state pensions. Human capital is excluded altogether, UBS clarifies, along with assets and debts owned by the state. Data sources credited in the report include the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, OECD and World Bank, as well as the central banks and statistics of individual countries. It also uses the UBS/PwC Billionaires database and sources data and information from Forbes Media LLC.