The great Indian middle class, in charts

Three economists, Neelanjan Sircar, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav went around India asking: 'Do you call yourself middle class?'

Locals sit at a bar in Bangalore, India. | Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

The emergence of the Indian middle class has received much attention in recent times but how does one define it? Some of the more popular approaches used by economists rely on indicators such as income and purchasing power parity.

Economists Neelanjan Sircar, Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav conducted a survey in which they asked 68,516 Indians: ‘Do you consider your family to be a middle class family’?

This measurement strategy of self-identification yielded surprising results. As many as 49 per cent of the respondents said ‘yes’, while only 14 per cent are categorised as middle class based on income. The results also showed economic optimism and social aspiration among them, which is not accounted for by either wealth or human capital.

Here are some charts that capture the results of the survey: