A couple of years ago I wrote a piece with a similar title; the goal was to increase awareness by sharing (and simplifying) the 200 pages long ‘Global Wealth Databook’ by Credit Suisse.
For the 2017 report, I’m trying another format. This time I took a more personalized approach, so you can ‘experience’ your own context in this snapshot.
In 2017 there were about 5 Billion adults in the world and the entire wealth of everyone was equal to $280 Trillion.
…about 10% of the people own 90% of the global wealth, which also means that 90% of the people share 10% of the entire global wealth
To overcome this, let’s imagine that the entire population is scaled down into an imaginable stadium with ‘only’ 50,000 people. Each person in the stadium represents 100,000 people.
You’re invited to be one of the 50,000
In a perfectly egalitarian society, every adult would have $56k. You, like every other person in the stadium (who represents another 99,999 adults), would be the happy custodian of $5.6B
But our world is anything but egalitarian. In fact, about 10% of the people own 90% of the global wealth, which also means that 90% of the people share 10% of the entire wealth.
So where do you fit in ?
First, you need to figure out what’s your personal wealth.
To do that, you need to add up the value of all your possessions- tangible and financial, minus any debt you may have.
Now checkout where you fit based on your own personal wealth:
- Under $10k — not sure it‘s of any comfort, but you’re part of the majority in the stadium. About 70% of the people share similar wealth as yours. As a group, you own only 2.7% of the wealth in the world.
- $10k-$100k — at least 35,053 in the stadium own less than you do. Your cohort is 10,635 people (±21%), and together you own 11.6% of the global wealth.
- $100k-$1m — you own more than 45,688 in the stadium and you’re cohort is 3,945 people. This group represents 7.9% of the adults in the world, but as a group it owns 40% of the wealth.
- $1m-$5m — there are only 320 people that have similar net worth to yours.
- $5m-$10m — among the entire 50,000 people, only 31 share similar net worth to yours.
- $10m-$50m — you are one of 15 lucky people who have similar net worth in the entire stadium.
- If your net worth is $50m or more, it means that you own more than anyone else in the stadium.
The ‘above $1m’ group represents 36m adults (0.7% of all); their share in the global wealth is close to 46%.
I scaled the numbers so that each one represents 100,000 people, so some numbers are obviously rounded up. For example, the actual number of the wealthiest cohort ($50m or more) is 148,243.
