{"id":56255,"date":"2013-07-20T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T17:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2013-07-17T23:00:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T04:00:14","slug":"the-wealth-of-nations-the-u-s-is-no-1-in-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/07\/20\/the-wealth-of-nations-the-u-s-is-no-1-in-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wealth of Nations: The U.S. is No. 1 in Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wealth data is not easy to get. \u00a0Still for three years now, Credit Suisse Research Institute has published an annual Global Wealth Databook which attempts to estimate global wealth holdings. \u00a0The most recent issue<\/a> includes data covering 2012.\u00a0 According to Credit Suisse, the goal \u201cis to provide the best available estimates of the wealth holdings of households around the world for the period since the year 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the publication, global household wealth was $222.7 trillion in mid-2012, equal to $48,500 for each of the 4.6 billion adults in the world. \u00a0Wealth is defined as “the marketable value of financial assets plus non-financial assets (principally housing and land) less debts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, as the figure below shows, average global wealth varies considerably across countries and regions.<\/p>\n

\"picture<\/a><\/p>\n

Also significant are the values of the\u00a0mean<\/em> vs the median<\/em> wealth in each of the countries. \u00a0Mean or average wealth is calculated by dividing the total wealth of a country by its adult population. \u00a0 Median wealth is the wealth holdings of the adult in the middle of the wealth distribution.\u00a0The median is generally considered a far more reliable indicator of wealth because it is less sensitive to extremes at the top or bottom of the distribution. \u00a0The greater the divergence of mean and median wealth, the greater is the wealth inequality.<\/p>\n

The table below provides mean and median wealth estimates for those countries with generally reliable data. As you can see, the U.S. ranks high in terms of mean wealth, trailing only 5 countries.\u00a0 Things are quite different when it comes to median wealth; the U.S. trails 26 countries! \u00a0Not surprisingly, then, the U.S. is No. 1 when it comes to the mean\/median wealth ratio, or wealth inequality.<\/p>\n

\"global<\/a><\/p>\n

We clearly dominate in the number of millionaires and the upper global wealth categories.\u00a0 Are we a wealthy country? Definitely.\u00a0 Is that wealth concentrated in relatively few hands? \u00a0Definitely.<\/p>\nMartin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College<\/a>. You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wealth data is not easy to get.  Still for three years now, Credit Suisse Research Institute has published an annual Global Wealth Databook which attempts to estimate global wealth holdings.  The most recent issue includes data covering 2012.  According to Credit Suisse, “The aim of the Credit Suisse Global Wealth project is to provide the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":56269,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,260,274,3920],"class_list":["post-56255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-international-comparisons","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-nation-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/07\/picture-wealth.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56255"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56266,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56255\/revisions\/56266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}