In "poverty lines" the expenditure required for a daily calorie intake of in rural areas –
Wealth index

The "wealth index" is a composite measure of the cumulative living standard of a household.
The wealth index is calculated using easy-to-collect data on a household's ownership of selected assets, such as televisions and bicycles, materials used for housing construction, and types of water access and sanitation facilities.
Information on the wealth index is based on data collected in the household questionnaire.
After collecting data, various statistical procedures are used to create break points that define wealth quintiles as:-


Lowest (first) quintile
Second quintile
Third quintile
Fourth quintile
Highest quintile


The distribution of the population across wealth quintiles show large variation across states : -


Delhi has maximum population in highest wealth quintile (70% of population).
Jharkhand has maximum population in lowest wealth quintile (49.6% of population).

Social class and health

The national family health survey - III (2005-06) conducted in India shows the glaring differences in infant mortality rate among the household belonging to various wealth index brackets → Infant mortality rate by wealth index in India (2005-06)
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