If your total wealth is over 1 million dollars you are in the top 0.5% of the global wealth pyramid.

If you have between 100k and 1m, you are in the top 7.5%.

If you have somewhere between 10k and 100k, you are still in the top third of the global pyramid.

If you own over 50 million dollars worth of assets, you are one of only 81,000 people on this planet.

If over 10 million you are still one of the richest 1 million people out of 7 billion people.

Not to say I know many people with over 10 million dollars, or any, but I do know people with over 1 million. I thought maybe they would be in the top 5%. But the top 0.5%? Wow.

Of course, living costs vary so it’s not completely accurate to say that someone owning $USD10k of assets in Australia is as wealthy as someone owning $USD10k worth of assets in Kenya, for example.

The Global Wealth Pyramid – putting things in perspective…

global wealth pyramid

At the top of the pyramid:Screen Shot 2013-06-07 at 5.15.27 PM

Numerically this computes to:

wealth range million adults % people trillion $ % wealth
>1miillion 24.2 0.5 69.2 35.6
100,000-1m 334 7.5 85 43.7
10,000-100,000 1045 23.5 32.1 16.5
<10,000 3038 68.4 8.2 4.2
4441.2 99.9 194.5 100

Mapped across various countries and continents it looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-06-07 at 5.13.23 PM

I’m analysing the PDF of the full Credit Suisse global wealth report here as part of my MPhil research.

I’m trying to understand how we can let such vast inequality persist. It gets worse…

Put another way, the most wealthy 300 people own the same as the poorest 3 billion people. This 3 min clip on global wealth inequality explains the distribution:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJtOhfpGlZ8[/youtube]

Is it fair that 300 people own the same as 3 billion??? How can we change the rules so that the system is more fair?

300 people own same as 3 billion

 

Also may be of interest to check out the perceived, desired and actual wealth inequality in the United States:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM[/youtube]

Or learn more on the global wealth pyramid here.

Now that’s perspective.