3/29/07

Wealth Distribution

The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 percent in the U.S. holding 70 percent of the country's wealth. (Compared with 61 percent in France, 56 percent in the UK, 44 percent in Germany and 39 percent in Japan.)

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two percent of adults own more than 50 percent of the world's assets, while the poorest half hold only 1 percent of wealth.

If all the world's wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use.

To belong to the top 1 percent of the world's wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37 million adults have achieved.

Almost 90 percent of the world's wealth is held in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.

[Excerpted from an article by Chris Giles, Financial Times]

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