Wealth Distribution
Wealth is concentrated more sharply than income. The global top 1% holds 47% of household wealth; the top 10% holds 76%. The bottom half of adults collectively owns ~1% of the world's wealth. Within countries, the US (top 1% holds 35%) and South Africa (top 1% holds 55%) sit at the extreme end; Slovakia, Belgium and Japan have the most evenly distributed wealth.
Key insights
Wealth is more concentrated than income everywhere
Across countries, wealth Gini coefficients run 10–20 points above income Ginis. The US has an income Gini of ~0.40 but a wealth Gini of ~0.85. The reasons: wealth accumulates over a lifetime and across generations; the bottom half typically holds zero or negative net wealth (debt > assets); housing and pension assets cluster around the top half; financial assets cluster at the top decile.
Housing dominates middle-class wealth
For the bottom 90% in most developed economies, the primary residence is the single largest asset. For the top 10%, financial assets (equities, private business equity) dominate. This composition difference explains why asset-price moves affect different wealth deciles differently — housing booms compress the wealth Gini; equity-market booms widen it.
Top shares rose 1980–2015, mixed since
Top 1% wealth shares rose in most advanced economies from the late 1970s through the 2010s — most sharply in the US, UK, and emerging markets like Russia, China and India. Continental Europe was flatter. Since 2015, the trend has mixed: top shares have stabilized or modestly declined in some advanced economies as middle-class housing wealth recovered, but continued to rise in others driven by tech-sector wealth concentration.
Top 1% wealth share — selected countries (2024)
% of total household wealth held by richest 1%
Key Finding: South Africa, Russia and the US sit at the top; Slovakia, Belgium and Japan at the bottom.
Global wealth share by group (2024)
% of global household wealth
Key Finding: The top 10% holds three quarters of global wealth; the bottom half holds about 1%.
Methodology & caveats
Wealth includes what?
Household net wealth = financial assets (cash, deposits, equities, pensions) + non-financial assets (housing, businesses, vehicles) − liabilities (mortgages, consumer credit). Different studies handle pension wealth differently: defined-benefit pensions are sometimes excluded, which raises measured inequality, and sometimes included as their actuarial present value, which lowers it.
Survey vs admin data
Household wealth surveys (HFCS in Europe, SCF in US) tend to under-sample the top — the very rich don't answer surveys. Tax-administrative sources (estate tax returns, capitalised-income methods) capture the top better but may miss informal wealth. The combined estimates used by the World Inequality Database and Credit Suisse merge multiple sources with explicit top-tail calibration.
Negative net wealth at the bottom
In most rich-country surveys, the bottom 5–15% of adults have negative net wealth — they owe more than they own (student loans, consumer debt). This means the bottom-50% share is sensitive to definitional choices: simple averages of net wealth across this group can be very small or even negative.