[LINK] Aussies wealthiest people in the world

[Jim Birch]

The housing bubble is alive and well in Australia.  This makes us appear
richer.  Drop like 20-30% of the house dollar value of Australian homes -
about what has happened elsewhere post GFC and could happen here on an
economic shock - and we'd loose a little shine.

Also, the headline US billionaire list might appear to be volatile, the
underlying social mobility of the US is now lower than it has been for
decades, and is lower than Australia and Europe except the UK.

See (eg)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/allen-west-gets-it-twisted_n_1009118.html
or a more comprehensive analysis
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/krueger_cap_speech_final_remarks.pdf

-Jim




On 11 October 2013 08:41, <stephen at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> Why Aussies are world's wealthiest
>
> ANDREW MAIN http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/ OCT 10, 2013 (snip)
>
>
> AUSTRALIANS are per capita the wealthiest people in the world, according to
> a report yesterday by Zurich-based bank Credit Suisse.
>
> The country's wealth is also more evenly distributed across the population,
> the report says.
>
> The median wealth for every Australian is $US219,505.
>
> The median is the midpoint between the poorest and the richest, and
> Australia's ranking reflected the fact that Australian wealth was shared
> more widely than in some rich countries, said David McDonald, chief
> investment strategist in Australia for Credit Suisse Private Banking.
>
> "The top 10 per cent of Australians own 50 per cent of the wealth. This
> compares with the top 10 per cent around the world owning an average of 86
> per cent and the top 10 per cent in the US owning 74 per cent."
>
> The report finds Australia's mean wealth per adult, or average, is just
> over $US400,000, beaten only by Switzerland, and there are 1.12 million
> Australians classed as US-dollar millionaires, although that includes all
> net assets including housing and superannuation.
>
> That is the same number of millionaires as in China. In 2011, there were
> 1.079 million in Australia compared with 1.017 million in China.
>
> The report says there are 1.76 million Australians in the top 1 per cent of
> global wealth holders, accounting for 3.8 per cent of that group despite
> this country having only 0.4 per cent of the world's adult population.
>
> Of those rich Australians, the report says 2059 of them are ultra-high-net-
> worth individuals, defined as having personal wealth exceeding $US50m.
> That's 2.1 per cent of the global total that is dominated by the US with
> 46.3 per cent.
>
> A surprise was that personal extreme wealth is not static: fewer than two-
> thirds of the Forbes magazine billionaires from 2000-01 were still on that
> list five years later and "barely half of them were on it by the end of the
> decade", the report says.
>
> The growing influence of the Asia-Pacific region is shown by the report's
> prediction that the US will have total personal wealth of $US100 trillion
> by 2018, $10 trillion less than the Asia-Pacific. The region is currently
> worth $US73.9 trillion and is expected to overtake the US in 2017. Most of
> the growth is expected to come from China, whose wealth by 2018 is expected
> to reach the level the US was at in 1993.
> --
>
> Cheers,
> Stephen
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