I've just turned up some interesting wealth statistics provided by Credit Suisse's research arm. I welcome comments and responses to what I'm about to show you,
The world rankings of household wealth per adult place Australia in second spot on US$411,060 slightly behind Switzerland ... a very good achievement.
And nations' proportion of adults with wealth less than US$10,000 are amazingly varied. Only 6% of Australians are that poor, while the respective figures for the UK and the USA are hugely higher: 18% (UK) and 28% (USA). So the latter has vast hoards of poverty stricken people. The adult population in the USA is about 250 million, so about 45 million of them are living in great poverty. At the other of the spectrum, the parentage of adult Australians with wealth > US$100,000 is c. 67%, the fourth highest in the world. So wealth here is much more equally shared here than in the USA ... or Britain for that matter.
Looking at median wealth statistics bears this out. Median wealth per adult in Australia is c. US$191,453 and that's the highest in the world. Switzerland comes in a close second. Canada is in 6th spot on US$106,343; New Zealand and Britain hold 8th and 9th spot respectively on about US$98,000 (or less than half of Australia's figure); Ireland in 15th place on US$72,430 beats the USA in 18th spot (US$61,667) by a wide margin; and Germany comes number 24 on just US$35,169. So wealth in Australia is clearly spread around much better than many other places and there's a lot of it.
Why is Australia's median wealth per adult considerably more than three times the United States figure? And what, if anything, can anyone do about it? Since Canada's figure is almost double the US I'm surprised there isn't long queue to cross the border northwards just like there's a queue on the northern border of Mexico.
AS
The world rankings of household wealth per adult place Australia in second spot on US$411,060 slightly behind Switzerland ... a very good achievement.
And nations' proportion of adults with wealth less than US$10,000 are amazingly varied. Only 6% of Australians are that poor, while the respective figures for the UK and the USA are hugely higher: 18% (UK) and 28% (USA). So the latter has vast hoards of poverty stricken people. The adult population in the USA is about 250 million, so about 45 million of them are living in great poverty. At the other of the spectrum, the parentage of adult Australians with wealth > US$100,000 is c. 67%, the fourth highest in the world. So wealth here is much more equally shared here than in the USA ... or Britain for that matter.
Looking at median wealth statistics bears this out. Median wealth per adult in Australia is c. US$191,453 and that's the highest in the world. Switzerland comes in a close second. Canada is in 6th spot on US$106,343; New Zealand and Britain hold 8th and 9th spot respectively on about US$98,000 (or less than half of Australia's figure); Ireland in 15th place on US$72,430 beats the USA in 18th spot (US$61,667) by a wide margin; and Germany comes number 24 on just US$35,169. So wealth in Australia is clearly spread around much better than many other places and there's a lot of it.
Why is Australia's median wealth per adult considerably more than three times the United States figure? And what, if anything, can anyone do about it? Since Canada's figure is almost double the US I'm surprised there isn't long queue to cross the border northwards just like there's a queue on the northern border of Mexico.
AS
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