Distribution of Wealth II

God Bless the Child

Money, you've got lots of friends
They're crowding around the door
When you're gone and spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give crusts of bread and such
You can help yourself, but don't take too much

Mama may have, papa may have 
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own
God bless the child, the child that's got his own 

How much wealth is enough to be your own? 

God bless the Swiss. I had the feared that the Global Wealth Databook published annually by Credit Suisse would be discontinued after Credit Suisse was taken over by UBS. In fact UBS has published the 2023 book. And this Databook has wealth information by country by year from 2000 to 2022. Thus it is possible to not only see how wealth is distributed among the population of a market, but it is also possible to see how this distribution has changed over time. For 2022, the book reports mean, median and total wealth and adult populations for 164 markets which are primarily countries ( Hong Kong SAR,  and Taiwan are reported as separate markets from Mainland China, despite China’s’ territorial claims; some markets are not reported because there is no data, e.g., Sudan, South Sudan, etc.). This means that at least for this year it is still possible to examine how wealth is distributed in most markets.

“Sadly” the United States, based on the ratio of the mean to the median wealth, has lost ground as the market/country with the most inequitable distribution of wealth in the world. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/04/distribution-of-wealth.html   

While Bahrain and the Bahamas are still the most inequitable counties, again they are very small markets. But the United States has lost ground to other small markets such Lesotho, Brunei, Suriname and even to the large market of Brazil. If the mean to median is weighted by the share of population, the United States has only the third most inequitable distribution of wealth after India and China. But this ranking is almost entirely because of the size of India and China’s populations. The Top 10 Most Inequitable Markets ranked by weighted inequality of wealth (mean divided by median) are

Market	Share of Adults	Share of Wealth	Weighted Mean /Median Wealth
India	18.1%	3.4%	0.80
Mainland China	21.7%	18.8%	0.60
United States	4.9%	31.1%	0.25
Brazil	3.1%	1.0%	0.16
Indonesia	3.6%	0.7%	0.13
Russia	2.2%	1.0%	0.10
Nigeria	2.0%	0.2%	0.09
Pakistan	2.5%	0.2%	0.06
Philippines	1.4%	0.2%	0.06
Bangladesh	2.1%	0.2%	0.05

where the mean wealth per adult that is closest to the median wealth per population remains Iceland. But this is not surprising in a country with arguably the oldest democratic body (the Althing)  and where almost everyone is related to everyone else on the island.