[SIZE=5]According to a Credit Suisse report, global household wealth has remained ‘unscathed’ despite the pandemic.[/SIZE]
The 2020 Credit Suisse Global Wealth report makes for stark reading.
Released at the end of October, it revealed that the top one percent of households globally own 43 percent of all personal wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own only one percent.
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That top-tier one percent amounts to 52 million people who are all millionaires in net wealth (after debt). Within this elite fraction are 175,000 ultra-wealthy people (those with over $50 million in net wealth), or 0.1 percent, who in turn own 25 percent of the world’s wealth.
Credit Suisse’s annual report is a comprehensive analysis of global wealth – not income – and of the inequality of personal wealth. Household wealth is made up of financial assets (stocks, bonds, cash, pension funds) and property owned, minus debts.
Covering the wealth of roughly 5.2 billion adults across 200 countries, the report’s findings show that global wealth levels have remained remarkably steady despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
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While 2019 was a year of tremendous wealth creation – rising by $36.3 trillion – $17.5 trillion was wiped out between January and March 2020 alone as the pandemic began to ravage economies.
Despite that initial plunge, global household wealth recovered, reaching $400 trillion by the end of June – $1 trillion more than the March total, after ending 2019 at $399.2 trillion – showing little evidence by mid-year that global wealth distribution had changed that much.