How much a typical person in a community spends in a month, on food, rent, fuel, clothes and everything else. In India this is the usual way to measure how well-off people are, because reliable income data does not exist.
Of each community's population, the share living in households in the top 20% of spending nationally. An even spread would put every community at 20.0%; only 13.7% of Muslims reach the top fifth, and the squeeze is urban: 26.3% of urban Muslims make the national top fifth against 45.3% of urban Hindus. Muslims sit at par in the poorest fifth, so the distribution is compressed below the top, not crowded at the bottom.
Community
Overall
Urban
Rural
Muslim
13.7%
26.3%
6.5%
Sikh
40.6%
58.5%
34.4%
Christian
30.0%
57.4%
17.9%
Hindu
20.2%
45.3%
10.1%
All communities
20.0%
42.9%
10.3%
From microdataReproduce this view. This figure is recomputed from the unit-level survey microdata, the raw NSS or PLFS records behind the linked source. Source: HCES 2023-24 (NSO unit-level data). Each value is computed from the data file · transform code; every row records its own source and method.
An average Muslim spent INR 4,455 a month in 2023, about a tenth less than the INR 4,974 a Hindu spent and below the national INR 4,958. Spending is the standard yardstick of living standards in India, used because no reliable income figure by religion exists, and on it Muslims sit at the lower end.
How to read the chart
The chart compares average monthly spending per person across communities; higher means a higher material standard of living. The By state tab shows how far this swings across India, Top spending fifth looks at the better-off slice of each community, and Urban vs rural splits town from village. Spending gaps are narrower than wealth gaps, because even poorer households must spend to live.
Why it matters
Monthly spending is the closest thing to a living-standards thermometer India has by religion. It rolls food, rent, fuel, schooling and health into one figure, and a persistent gap means a persistently lower standard of everyday life.
Status
Behind
Muslim INR 4,455 vs Hindu INR 4,974 in 2023, INR 519 behind. The Muslim shortfall in spending, around a tenth, is smaller than the gap in wealth, the deeper divide; consumption gaps compress because everyone must eat and pay rent.
Deeper analysis
Potential drivers
Lower earnings · The consumption gap flows from the jobs gap: more informal, self-run and casual work means lower and less certain household income ↗ Sachar Committee Report, 2006.
More mouths · A larger average household spreads the same earnings across more people, lowering spending per head ↗ Sachar Committee Report, 2006.
Urban poverty · Muslims are concentrated in towns, but in their poorer, informal-economy parts, where costs are high and wages low ↗ Sachar Committee Report, 2006.
Key levers
Raise earnings · The durable lever is better, more formal work, the same fix as the jobs cards.
Targeted welfare · Food, fuel and cash support reach poorer Muslim households through universal rather than separate schemes ↗ Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee, 2014.
Education · Schooling is the slow lever that lifts the next generation's earnings and spending.
Key stakeholders
National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation: A statutory corporation under the Ministry of Minority Affairs that provides concessional credit for self-employment and skills to the notified minority communities.
Ministry of Minority Affairs: The Union ministry for the welfare and economic development of India's notified minorities, running scholarship, skilling and livelihood schemes.
Sahulat Microfinance Society: A national NGO that promotes interest-free microfinance for marginalised communities through a network of member-owned credit cooperatives. Donate ↗
SEWA BharatGiveIndia vetted ↗: A federation that builds financial independence for informal-sector women through credit cooperatives, banking access and financial literacy. Donate ↗
Rang De: An RBI-regulated peer-to-peer social-investing platform that channels low-cost credit to low-income rural entrepreneurs, most of them women.
Badges link to an independent or registered credential where the organisation publishes one (Credibility Alliance, GiveIndia, 80G, FCRA). Many smaller NGOs do not take part in these registries, so a missing badge is not a mark against an organisation.
About this measurement
Definition. Average monthly spending per person (Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure, MPCE). In India this is the standard measure of economic well-being, used in place of income, for which no reliable figure by religion exists.
Methodology. The 2023-24 figure is computed from the unit-level microdata of HCES 2023-24 (NSO, 2.61 lakh households), pulled via the MoSPI NADA API: weighted monthly per capita consumption expenditure (food + consumables & services + durables, 365-day items annualised), cross-classified by the religion of the household head. The method reproduces the published national MPCE (rural INR 4,122 / urban INR 6,996) within about 2% before the religion split is taken. NSO's note for unit-level users cautions that religion is self-reported and unverified and that the survey is designed to estimate MPCE with the State/UT as the basic stratum, so the religion figures are best read as indicative, no sub-state estimates are made, and the survey's internal Muslim population share (13%) sits a little below the Census.
The earlier benchmark is the Sachar Committee (2006) from the NSS 61st round (2004-05): Muslims INR 635 vs the all-India INR 712, near SC/ST (INR 520) and far below upper-caste 'Hindu General' households (INR 1,023). The two rounds use different consumption methods (2004-05 URP vs 2023-24 MMRP) and rupees are nominal, so the level change over time is mostly inflation; the comparable story is the relative gap, which is stable at about 10% below the national average across the 20 years and is widest in towns (urban Muslims INR 5,467 vs urban Hindus INR 7,064). The By state tab shows the 2023-24 per-state Muslim MPCE computed from the same microdata, urban and rural separately (State/UT is the survey's basic stratum, so this is the finest permitted cut; cells with fewer than 30 sampled Muslim households are suppressed).
The Sachar 2004-05 state figures remain in the downloadable data file. The "Top spending fifth" tab folds in the distribution counterpart computed from the same microdata with the same validated MPCE machinery (the decarded top-quintile-share metric): person-weighted national MPCE quintile cuts (INR 2,903 / 3,677 / 4,632 / 6,302 per person per month), with every all-India quintile share equal to 20.0 by construction as the built-in validation. Muslims sit at par in the poorest fifth (20.5%) but only 13.7% reach the richest fifth (Hindu 20.2%, Christian 30.0%, Sikh 40.6%), and the squeeze is urban: 26.3% of urban Muslims reach the national top fifth against 45.3% of urban Hindus.