Presentation by: Anthony Shorrocks (Partnership for Economic Policy) OECD Conference on wealth inequalities: Measurement and policies Paris, 26 April 2018.

1. The distribution of household wealth
within countries, regions and the world
Anthony Shorrocks
OECD, Paris
26 April 2018

2. Background Sources
Jim Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, Edward Wolff
• “The world distribution of household wealth” in J.B. Davies (ed.) Personal
Wealth from a Global Perspective (OUP, 2008)
• “The level and distribution of global household wealth”, Economic Journal,
March 2011
Jim Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas, Anthony Shorrocks
• Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, Annual 2010-2017
• Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, Annual 2010-2017

3. Broad Parameters
• wealth = real property + financial assets – debts
• wealth level results for years 2000 to 2017
• wealth distribution pattern for 2000 to 2017
• compared across countries using official exchange rates
• comparisons for adult population

4. Global wealth methodology
(1) mean level of wealth for each country: based on
• household balance sheets and wealth survey data where available
• extended by regression methods to most other countries
• region-income class averages imputed to remaining countries
(2) distribution of wealth for each country: based on
• wealth distribution data for c30 countries
• wealth dist estimated from income distribution for most other
countries
• region-income class averages imputed to remaining countries
(3) generate synthetic global wealth sample (1.4 million obs per
year)
(4) adjust top tail to conform with number of Forbes billionaires
(5) process for global results

5. World Wealth Levels, 2017

6. Wealth and Population by Region, 2017

7. Global trends in assets and debts per adult,
2000–2017

8. Pareto Top Tail

9. Unadjusted and adjusted wealth values for China

10. Pooling Forbes Data 2000-2017, Australia

11. Pooling Forbes Data 2000-2017, China

12. Smoothing Forbes Data 2000-2017, China

13. Log wealth share vs log population share, USA 2013

14. Wealth Ginis (%)

15. Share of Top 10%

16. Share of Top 1%

17. The Global Wealth Pyramid
2017

18. Regional Composition of Global Wealth
Distribution, 2017

19. Dollar millionaires by country of residence

20. Global Inequality Trends
2000-2017

21. Mean and Median Wealth for Europe
2000-2017