Friday, December 25, 2020

Wealth inequality

 Information comes from a 2020 Credit Suisse Global Wealth report reveals that:

 The top 1% of households globally own 43% of all personal wealth while the bottom 50% have only 1%. 

 The 1% are all millionaires in net wealth (after debt) and there are 52m of them. 

 Within this 1%, there are 175,000 ultra-wealthy people with over $50m in net wealth.

That’s a minuscule 0.1% owning 25% of the world’s wealth!

 The Credit Suisse global wealth report analyses the household wealth of 5.2 billion people across the globe. Household wealth is made up of the financial assets (stocks, bonds, cash, pension funds) and property (houses etc.) owned.  And the report measures this, net of debt. 

Most shocking is the still huge inequality of household wealth globally as shown by the wealth pyramid 


At the apex of the wealth pyramid, the report estimates that at the start of this year there were 175,690 ultra-high net worth (UHNW) adults in the world with net worth exceeding US$50 million.

At the end of 2019, North America and Europe accounted for 55% of total global wealth, with only 17% of the world adult population. In contrast, the population share was three times larger than the wealth share in Latin America, four times the wealth share in India, and nearly ten times the wealth share in Africa.

Wealth differences within countries are even more pronounced. The top 1% of wealth holders in a country typically own 25%–40% of all wealth, and the top 10% usually account for 55%–75%. At the end of 2019, millionaires around the world – which number exactly 1% of the adult population – accounted for 43.4% of global net worth. In contrast, 54% of adults with wealth below US$10,000 (i.e. pretty much nothing)  together mustered less than 2% of global wealth.

1% own 43% of global wealth, while billions have no wealth at all – Climate & Capitalism (climateandcapitalism.com)

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