Households assets in India
The ownership of assets is one way to understand living standards in a country. In India, TVs are the most commonly owned of four key assets
Household income and household spending are two key ways in which economists assess a country's standard of living.[1] One additional method to understand changes in the economic situation of households is to look at the ownership of a set of physical assets.
Among India's National Sample Surveys (NSS), the Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys[2] ask households if they possess any among a list of assets.[3] These surveys are representative at the national and the state level.
Asset ownership
For this piece, we look at household-level ownership of four physical assets: televisions, refrigerators, air-conditioners/ coolers and washing machines.
The most widely owned of these assets is the television.Two-thirds of Indian households owned a television in 2024. This translates to a little more than 200 million Indian households with a TV in their homes.[4]
Refrigerators are also now widely owned, particularly in urban India. Nearly half of Indian households had a refrigerator by 2024.
Washing machines and air-conditioners are the least commonly owned of the four household assets. Only one in five households - or around 60 million households - owned a washing machine in 2024.
One quarter of urban households and just 5% of rural households own all four assets - TVs, refrigerators, ACs or coolers, and washing machines.
Growth in asset ownership over time
The ownership of household assets has grown steadily in India.
In the early 1990s, just 10% of Indian households owned a television. TV ownership grew rapidly from the 1990s onwards, but the pace of growth has fallen in recent years, suggesting that household ownership of televisions is nearing saturation.
The ownership of refrigerators, ACs/ coolers and washing machines, on the other hand, began to accelerate from the early 2010s.
State-wise asset ownership
States in the north and the south with higher per capita incomes have a considerably higher ownership of TVs, fridges and washing machines, compared to central and eastern states that are relatively poorer.
A majority of households in Punjab and Haryana, for instance, own a TV, fridge and washing machine, as opposed to just 1% in Bihar.
AC/ cooler ownership is concentrated in India's drier central and northern states that see high summer temperatures.
While asset ownership is growing across the country, the pace of growth has been fastest in the richer states.
Economic class
The ownership of household appliances rises as household spending grows. Here, households are divided into five equal groups by arranging them in increasing order of household consumption expenditure. This creates household expenditure quintiles, from the poorest 20% to the richest 20%.
Even among the poorest 20% of urban Indians, over half now own a television, while over half of the second quintile among urban households own a refrigerator. Washing machine and AC ownership is concentrated among the richest quintile.
We also look at households that own all of three assets - televisions, refrigerators and washing machines. We do not consider AC/ coolers here as their ownership is geographically concentrated in the hotter parts of the country.
The differences in ownership of the three assets between the poorest and the richest quintile is striking. At one end of the spectrum - the bottom-most rural consumption quintile - only 1% households have all the three assets. In the richest urban quintile, more than 70% of the households have all of them.
[1] See our work on per capita income and on household consumption in India.
[2] The primary goal of HCES is to record expenditure on household consumption of goods and services. The household expenditure surveys also record whether the sample household possesses a household durable. Up until the 55th round (1999-2000), the HCES recorded the number of durables in use by households, while from the 61st round (2004-05) up to the 68th (2011-12), the surveys recorded only whether the households possessed (yes/no) the listed asset. Recent HCES (2022-23 and 2023-24) record the possession of household durables in a separate set of questions and cover 12 assets only.
[3] The National Family Health Surveys, especially from 1999 onwards, ask households if they have durables/appliances. A few recent Censuses also record the availability of household assets and amenities. The All India Debt and Investment Surveys record the value of assets such as land, transport equipment, machinery in household enterprises such as that used in agriculture, but does not record information on household appliances.
[4] There were roughly 350 million households in India in 2024. To estimate this, we use the 2024 population projection (1.4 billion) from the Registrar General of India, and the average household size from HCES 2023-24 (4.17). Using these, we arrive at an estimate of 335 million households in India in 2024.
