Figures on the inequality of wealth are harder to come by than those on the inequality of income. I recently commented on a welcome new official series, the Wealth and Assets Survey, which suggested that – contrary to popular myth – there had been no big change in the distribution of wealth since the 1980s. On the contrary, the figures suggested that the distribution of wealth had become slightly more equal between 2006-08 and 2008-10.
It is even rarer to find good quality comparable figures for wealth inequality in different countries. So I was grateful to my colleague Hamish McRae for drawing my attention to a paper from Jefferies International, the investment bank (published 16 October), which contained the chart reproduced here.
This uses IMF statistics to compare the share of wealth owned by the top 10 per cent with that owned by the bottom 50 per cent in nine countries. The chart ranks countries by the share of the top tenth of the population, although the distribution of income in Spain is actually more equal than in the UK, because of the larger share owned by the bottom half.
What is important, though, is that the chart suggests that the distribution of wealth is more equal in the UK than in Germany, France and the Netherlands, three countries often held up as model social-democratic societies to whose levels of social cohesion we should aspire. Instead, Germany and the Netherlands in particular seem to have a level of wealth inequality comparable to that of the rich-world boo-bear, the US.
The next time someone tells you the rich get richer and the poor get poorer innit tell them that the gap between rich and poor in Britain has grown narrower in recent years, and that wealth is more equally distributed here than in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
Update: The sources for the chart are not readily available on the internet (the chart comes from a private client document), but there are similar numbers in the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2012, which is also a paid-for document. Here are the Gini coefficients for the distribution of wealth given by Credit Suisse in the nine countries in the chart (the lower the Gini the more equal the distribution):
Japan 60%
Italy 65%
Spain 66%
UK 67½%
China 69%
France 75½%
Germany 78%
Netherlands 81%
US 85%
Second update: Some correspondents have asked questions about Credit Suisse’s methodology that I haven’t yet been able to answer, and to which I hope to return. But just to add to the consternation of people who think that the UK is one of the most unequal places on Earth, let me add the Gini coefficients for the social-democratic paradises of Scandinavia, all except Finland’s higher than the UK’s:
Finland 66%
Denmark 70%
Norway 78%
Sweden 81%
Eagle Eye 