From the Department of Obvious Findings, the world’s wealthiest individuals are a whole lot wealthier than everyone else. But just how much wealthier is sort of astonishing:
…the richest 1 per cent of adults alone owned 40 per cent of global assets in 2000, and the richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of the world total. By contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.
I have nothing to add.
jeffy
I thought it was interesting that the measure of wealth in the study is “net worth” rather than the usual income. And this bit:…a net worth of $2,161 (U.S.) is enough to belong to the top half of the world’s wealth, but to be a member of the top 10 per cent requires at least $61,000 and membership of the top 1 per cent requires more than $500,000 per adult.shows that if you’re like me and your mortgage swamps your assets, you’re not a member of that upper echelon.
Eric de Place
Jeffy, I was unclear about that in the media coverage I linked to. I eventually came to the conclusion that the net worth must value people’s wealth as “value of assets (including house)” minus “debt on assets(including house)”. If it just calculates my debt and not the value of the assets that I “own” because of that debt… well, then my profile is probably more similar to the average resident of Calcutta.