What households own, and what they owe.
Most of what an Indian family owns is land and the house it lives in. Most of what it owes is to a bank, though in villages a moneylender is still often the lender. A national survey of debt and investment counts both, household by household.
A family's balance sheet
A farming family in Bihar may own a small plot, a brick house, a buffalo and a bank account. On paper that can add up to several lakh rupees. Very little of it can pay a hospital bill next week: the land feeds the family and the house shelters it. Wealth in rural India is mostly of this kind, valuable and hard to turn into cash.
Debt works the other way. A crop loan from the bank, money from a relative for a wedding, an advance from the local moneylender before the harvest: each has its own price and its own pressure. Who lends, at what interest and for what purpose tells you more about a family's position than the amount alone.
The All-India Debt and Investment Survey asks a sample of households across the country to list what they own and what they owe on one date, and what they spent on land, buildings and equipment over the year. It is the only national source that puts a household's assets and its debts side by side.
This round counted assets and debts as on 30 June 2018. The survey is run about once a decade, so it describes the country at that date. For bank lending since then, see the credit guide.
How to read this survey
Averages include everyone. Unless a chart says otherwise, an average is taken over all households, including those that own none of the asset or owe nothing. The average debt of a rural household is ₹59,748; a rural household that actually owes money owes ₹1,70,533 on average.
Two dates, two kinds of figure. Assets and outstanding loans are stocks counted on 30 June 2018. Spending on new houses, farm equipment and business assets is a flow over July 2018–June 2019. The interviews came later, but they ask about those dates.
"Per 1,000" means two different things. Some charts count households per 1,000 households; divide by ten for a percentage. Others split the money owed into rupees per ₹1,000 of debt, which divided by ten is a share of the debt. Each chart says which.
Deciles rank households by assets. Decile 1 is the tenth of households with the least, decile 10 the tenth with the most. Rural and urban households are ranked separately.
One household, several answers. A family can own land and a vehicle, and owe a bank and a relative. Ownership rates and borrowing rates by lender overlap and do not add up.
What the survey found
30 June 2018Land and buildings make up 92% of what the average rural household owns, and 87% in towns. Bank deposits are almost universal but small; shares barely register. Gold sits outside these totals: 847 / 1,000 rural households and 782 / 1,000 urban households keep some.
Wealth is very unequal. The tenth of rural households with the most assets average ₹81,17,006; the tenth with the least, ₹40,639. In towns the gap is wider: ₹1,50,34,985 against ₹1,807.
Banks and other institutions hold 87% of urban household debt but only 66% in villages. Moneylenders hold 23% of rural debt, against 7% in towns.
An urban household owes ₹1,20,336 on average across all households, and ₹5,36,861 if it is one of those that borrow. Borrowing is more common in villages, but loans are larger in towns, where housing loans dominate.
What households own
Most rural households own land; deposits are close to universal
One household can own several kinds of asset, so these rates do not add up. A household counts as owning land or a building whatever its value.
Land and buildings carry most of the value
These averages include households that own none of the asset, so the figure for shares is small even though the households that hold shares may hold a lot. Gold and jewellery are counted separately, in the next chart.
Gold and jewellery sit outside the asset total
The survey records bullion and ornaments apart from its total of physical and financial assets, so they are not part of the average asset values above.
How household wealth is spread
Assets climb steeply up the ladder
Each decile is a tenth of rural (or urban) households, ranked from the poorest in assets to the richest. The top decile’s average shows how much of the total sits with a few households.
Assets differ across social groups
An average says nothing about the spread inside a group: some households in every group own far more than its average, and many own far less.
Livelihood shapes what a household owns
The survey classifies a household by its main livelihood. Rural and urban households use different classes, so compare within a sector.
Households headed by women own less
This classifies the household by its head. It does not say what women own in their own name.
Rural assets vary widely across states
State estimates rest on smaller samples than the all-India figure, and the survey uses the state boundaries of 2018. Urban estimates for every state are in Every Cut below.
What households owe, and to whom
Households with more assets borrow more often
A household counts once however many loans it has. Deciles rank households by assets, as in the chart of asset values.
The debt of a borrowing household is far higher than the average
The headline average debt divides by every household, including the many with no loan. This chart divides only by households that owe money, which is the figure a borrowing family would recognise.
Banks hold most household debt; in villages, moneylenders still hold a large share
These shares divide the money owed, not the households. Insurance companies, provident funds, employers, financial corporations, chit funds, traders and SHGs not linked to banks hold the rest; they are in Every Cut.
Most household debt costs between 6 and 15 per cent a year
The bands are the annual rate of interest on each loan. Interest-free loans are in Every Cut, by lender.
What the money was borrowed for
The purpose is the use the household reported when the loan was taken. Farm and business borrowing is split into investment and running costs.
How common borrowing is, state by state
State estimates rest on smaller samples than the all-India figure. Urban estimates are in Every Cut below.
What households invest in
Housing takes most of what households invest
This is spending on building or buying fixed assets during the year to June 2019, not the stock of assets. Most households spent nothing, which keeps these averages low.
Common misreadings
"The average household owes this much." The average divides total debt by every household, most of which owe nothing. A family that borrows owes several times that average.
"Asset-rich means comfortable." A rural family's wealth is mostly land and a house. It cannot sell either without losing its livelihood or its home, so a large asset figure can sit beside a cash shortage.
"Moneylenders are a thing of the past." In villages they still hold a substantial share of the money households owe.
"A woman-headed household's assets are what women own." The survey classifies households by their head. What women own in their own names is a different question it does not answer here.
Every series, every cut
All 2,18,725 series behind this guide, from 23 files, at every level the source publishes them, including the ones no chart above draws. Find a state, an item or a sector, sort by the latest value or by the change on a year earlier, and download any file whole. A dash means no published figure for that cut, no figure for a year earlier, or a change that would mean nothing. Where a source explicitly leaves a survey cut unpublished, its known period and reason stay visible.
- 2,18,725 series: Household survey: every state and household cut 23 files, over 53 pages, filterable by file. Sortable and searchable.
Data and downloads
Every series this guide draws on: 23 files, 2,18,725 series. Each downloads as published, as JSON or as a table (CSV). Missing values are left empty, never zero. Large families of source tables are one row each; their files download from the family's own page.
| Data | Base | Coverage | Series | Vintage | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Household survey: every state and household cut2 sources. 23 files, listed on their own page 2018 to 2019, 23 files, 2,18,725 series, vintage Mixed dated and unknown revisions | 2018 to 201923 files | 2,18,725 | Mixed dated and unknown revisions | All 23 files |
Cite this guide
Measure of India, “Household assets and borrowing”, mixed dated sources and unpublished revision dates. measure.thisindianlife.today/guides/households/
Sources and method
Every figure comes from MoSPI's All-India Debt and Investment Survey (NSS 77th round, January to December 2019), as served by its eSankhyiki API, with the rural and urban estimates kept apart. The charts above answer one question each; every published table and cut, state by state, is in the table above and the downloads. The official report has further tables the API does not serve, including sampling errors and the number of households behind each estimate.
MoSPI: the AIDIS report, with definitions and detailed tables. Data revision date: Source revision date not published; MoSPI does not publish one for the API.