Household income and household spending are two key ways in which economists assess the economic conditions of households in the country, and the country's standard of living.[1] One additional method used to understand household economic well-being is to look at the ownership of a set of household 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 such 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/ air-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 220 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. An urban household is four times more likely to own a washing machine than the average rural household.
The HCES records the ownership of air-conditioners and air-coolers, in one single question. Three in ten houses in India report that they own an AC or an air cooler. However, AC ownership could be much lower than this, and a large portion of these households may be owning air coolers. A 2020 survey from the National Statistics Office recorded the ownership of ACs and air coolers separately.[5] The Multiple Indicator Survey found that less than 5% of households owned an AC while close to 14% homes owned an air cooler. A household was three times more likely to own an air cooler than an AC in 2020.
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. Ownership of washing machines and other appliances was under 5%. Over three decades, this has grown steadily.
TV ownership grew rapidly from the 1990s onwards, but the pace of growth fell in recent years. This suggests that household ownership of televisions may be nearing saturation.
The ownership of refrigerators, ACs/coolers and washing machines, on the other hand, grew slowly until the 2000s, and began to accelerate from the 2010s.
While TV ownership is moderating in India, household ownership of washing machines and refrigerators appears to be still rising.
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. But most of this is likely to be on account of air coolers. The 2020 NSO survey that recorded AC and cooler ownership separately had found that while more than 40% of households in Rajasthan owned a cooler, less than 5% of households owned an AC.
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, arranged in increasing order of household consumption expenditure. This creates household expenditure "quintiles", or five equal groups, which represent the bottom 20% of households by consumer spending, the lower 20%, the middle 20%, the upper 20%, and finally, the top or the richest 20% of households.
The television is the most equitably owned household asset among the four under consideration. Even among the bottom 20% households in the urban economic ladder, televisions have reached the majority of households.
Refrigerators and washing machines, on the other hand, are much less equitably owned by Indian households. Washing machine and AC ownership is concentrated among the richest quintile. The urban-rural gap in the ownership of these two appliances is also wider than that seen with televisions. In the lower 20% of Indian households, a majority of the urban households own a refrigerator, but less than 20% of rural households do.
If we look at household ownership of TVs, refrigerators and washing machines together, the differences in ownership between the poorest and the richest quintiles 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.[6]
[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 own any 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 do not record information on household appliances.
[4] India had roughly 335 million households residing in the country in 2024. We estimate this number using the official population number for 2024, (1.4 billion, which is a projection from the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, and divide it by the average household size from HCES 2023-24 (4.17).
[5] The Multiple Indicator Survey of 2020 recorded a diverse list of characteristics of households.
[6] We do not consider ACs/coolers in this grouping as their ownership is geographically concentrated in the hotter parts of the country.
