By Kamal Raj Dhungel in The Kathmandu Post:
...Three years ago the government estimated that Gini coefficient of Nepal was 0.47. This was the highest among SAARC countries, with Pakistan having the lowest 0.31.
...The Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS, 2003/04) also stated that the bottom 80 percent of the population earned 47 percent of total income; the richest 20 percent of the population earned 53 percent while the poorest 20 percent earned only 5 percent of income.
...This shows that there is an extremely unjust distribution of income where the richest 20 percent earns more than half of the total income. The annual mean and median income of the richest 20 percent of the households accounted to Rs 156,486 and 112, 962 respectively, while the same for the poorest 20 percent accounted to Rs 37, 243 and 31,147 respectively. The mean and median income of the richest 20 percent of the households is 4.2 and 3.6 times more than those of the poorest 20 percent.
