Political Economist

So much of the world's wealth is concentrated in a few hands that if it were distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets at their disposal, according to a survey published yesterday.

The finding was one of the more striking illustrations of how personal wealth is distributed so unevenly that the richest 2 per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of global assets, while the poorest half of the population holds only 1 per cent of wealth.

To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world's wealth-iest you need more than $500,000, something that 37m people have achieved, according to data from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-Wider). Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent.

The report shows that middle-income countries with high growth rates still have a long way to go before they catch up with the levels of prosperity of the richest. Almost 90 per cent of the world's wealth is held in North America, Europe and rich Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia. While North America has 6 per cent of the world's adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth.

The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 per cent in the US holding 70 per cent of the nation's wealth, compared with 61 per cent in France, 56 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany and 39 per cent in Japan.

Professor Anthony Shorrocks, the director of Unu-Wider, said that wealth was important to provide people with a source of income, insurance against unemployment or ill-health and as collateral for starting a business.

"For the poor there is a 'double whammy': not only do poor countries have disproportionately lower wealth but it is also more important for them," he said.

Mr Shorrocks said the number of wealthy individuals in a country depended on the size of the population, average wealth and the extent of inequality.

"China fails to feature strongly among the super-rich because average wealth is modest and wealth is evenly spread by inter-national standards," he said.

As countries grow richer, their population changes how it holds wealth, according to the report. In developing countries, property, particularly land and farm assets, are important, while cash savings tend todominate in middle-income countries.

Only in some advanced countries with developed financial sectors is there a strong appetite for holding equities and other more sophisticated financial assets.

Debt is also low in poor countries because financial institutions do not exist to allow people to borrow on the same scale as in the developed world.