Who are the Global Top 1?

The rise of the ‘emerging economies’ is leading to historically-unprecedented shifts in the global economy. While its implications for global poverty and the rise of a global ‘middle class’ have been documented, we present the first in-depth analysis of the changing composition of the global rich and the rising representation of developing countries at the top of the global distribution. We do so by constructing global distributions of income between 1988 and 2012 based on both household surveys and the new top incomes data derived from tax records, in order to capture the rich who are typically excluded from household surveys. We find that the representation of developing countries in the global top 1% declined until about 2002, but since 2005 it has risen significantly. This coincides with a salient decline in global inequality since 2005, according to a range of measures. We compare our estimates of the country-composition and income levels of the global rich with a number of other sources – including Credit Suisse’s estimates of global wealth, the Forbes World Billionaires List, attendees of the World Economic Forum, and estimates of top executives’ salaries. To varying degrees, all show a rise in the representation of the developing world in the ranks of the global élite.