IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uwo/epuwoc/20075.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating the Level and Distribution of Global Household Wealth

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We provide the first estimate of the level and distribution of global household wealth. Mean assets and debts within countries are measured, partly or wholly, for 39 countries using household balance sheet and survey data centred on the year 2000. Determinants of mean financial assets, non-financial assets, and liabilities are studied empirically, and the results are used to impute values to countries lacking wealth data. Household wealth per adult is US$43,494 in PPP terms, and ranges regionally from US$11,655 in Africa to US$193,147 in North America. Data on the shape of the household distribution of wealth for 20 countries, accounting for 59 per cent of the world’s population and, we estimate, 84 per cent of its wealth are used to establish patterns of wealth inequality within countries. Imputations are again performed for countries lacking wealth data, on the basis of the observed relation between wealth and income distribution for the 20 countries with data. The Gini coefficient for the global distribution of wealth is 0.804, and the share of the top 10 per cent is 71 per cent. Wealth of US$8,325 is needed to be in the top half of the distribution, and US$517,601 is needed to be in the top one per cent. Between-country differences in wealth are two-thirds of global inequality according to the Gini coefficient, indicating a larger role for withincountry inequality than in the case of income according to recent estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • James B. Davies & Susanna Sandström & Anthony Shorrocks & Edward N. Wolff, 2007. "Estimating the Level and Distribution of Global Household Wealth," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20075, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:uwo:epuwoc:20075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=economicsepri_wp
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Olympia Bover, 2010. "Wealth Inequality And Household Structure: U.S. Vs. Spain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(2), pages 259-290, June.
    2. Popov, Vladimir, 2014. "Socialism is dead, long live socialism!," MPRA Paper 54294, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Popov, Vladimir, 2019. "Billionaires, millionaires, inequality, and happiness," MPRA Paper 94081, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Anthony F. Shorrocks & Guanghua Wan, 2008. "Ungrouping Income Distributions: Synthesising Samples for Inequality and Poverty Analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-16, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Brinca, Pedro & Holter, Hans A. & Krusell, Per & Malafry, Laurence, 2016. "Fiscal multipliers in the 21st century," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 53-69.
    6. Davies, James B. & Sandstrom, Susanna & Shorrocks, Anthony & Wolff, Edward N., 2006. "The World Distribution of Household Wealth," Conference papers 331490, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    7. Popov, Vladimir, 2023. "Why the rich and the poor value freedom and equality differently," MPRA Paper 116563, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. James B. Davies & Susanna Sandström & Anthony Shorrocks & Edward Wolff, 2009. "The global pattern of household wealth," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 1111-1124.
    9. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz, 2013. "Cross-Country Comparability of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 2, pages 29-50.
    10. Thomas Goda, 2018. "The global concentration of wealth [Persistence of power, elites, and institutions]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 95-115.
    11. Popov, Vladimir, 2018. "Paradoxes of Happiness: Why People Feel More Comfortable With High Inequalities And High Murder Rates?," MPRA Paper 87118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Thomas Goda, 2014. "Global trends in relative and absolute wealth concentrations," Documentos de Trabajo CIEF 10897, Universidad EAFIT.
    13. Polterovich, Victor & Popov, Vladimir & Tonis, Alexander, 2009. "Instability of Democracy as Resource Curse," MPRA Paper 22069, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wealth; net worth; personal assets; inequality; households; balance sheets; portfolios;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Distribuição de riqueza in Wikipedia Portuguese
    2. Historia de la era contemporánea in Wikipedia Spanish
    3. समकालीन in Wikipedia Hindi

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwo:epuwoc:20075. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://economics.uwo.ca/research/research_papers/epri_workingpapers.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.