Learning, income, living conditions.
Historical literacy benchmarks, dated per-capita income and the multidimensional poverty evidence.
These measures have different populations, periods and methods. They belong beside one another, without being collapsed into a single score.
01 / CENSUS BENCHMARKS
The threshold
changes.
Reserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census CommissionerRBI’s 2023 handbook prints these Census literacy rates for Bihar and India. Through 1971 the denominator is people aged five and above; from 1981 it is seven and above. The separated marks below preserve that break. Territorial harmonisation of the historical row has not been independently certified.
| Place / measure | Reference period | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1951 | 13.49% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1951 | 18.33% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1961 | 21.95% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1961 | 28.3% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1971 | 23.17% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 5 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1971 | 34.45% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1981 | 32.32% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1981 | 43.57% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1991 | 37.49% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 1991 | 52.21% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 2001 | 47% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 2001 | 64.84% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateBiharDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 2011 | 61.8% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
Literacy rateIndiaDefinitionPopulation aged 7 years and above. Historical row as published by RBI; no claim of an independently harmonised present-boundary series. | 2011 | 72.99% | verifiedReserve Bank of India; Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner |
The pack’s 1991 and 2001 Bihar values are corrected to 37.49% and 47.00%. The unsupported later survey rows and the adult-education award annotation are omitted. These benchmarks do not estimate literacy in 2026.
02 / INCOME
A financial year,
a price basis.
| Place / measure | Reference period | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
Per-capita income at current pricesBiharDefinitionDES tile2024-25(Q); source label is per-capita income, not GDP per person. Not relabelled2026. | 2024-25 | ₹69,321 | verifiedDirectorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Bihar |
This is per-capita income, not GDP per person or the earnings of a typical household. The broader statistical notebook keeps current-price and constant-price state product separate.
THE UNDERLYING RECORDS
2 datasets · 15 records · normalized 26 October 2026
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