"The World Distribution of Household Wealth"
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Pioneering Study Shows Richest Two Percent Own Half World Wealth
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household
wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based
World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations
University (UNU-WIDER).
Much of the wealth is concentrated in North America, Europe and rich Asia-
Pacific nations such as Japan, Australia and the Republic of Korea, despite
their comparatively small population when measured against Africa and
countries such as China and India.
The UNU's World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER),
which conducted the study, called it the first of its kind to cover all
countries and all major components of household wealth, including financial
assets, debts and tangible property such as land and buildings.
Speaker Bio
Jim Davies is a Professor, and the RBC Financial Group Fellow, in the Department of Economics at the University of Western Ontario, where he has been a faculty member since 1977. He received his undergraduate training at the University of Manitoba and his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. Prof. Davies is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles. Specializing mainly in Public Economics, Prof. Davies has contributed to the study of tax policy, the personal distributions of income and wealth, saving, and risk. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Canadian Tax Journal and the Review of Income and Wealth, and a Research Fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute and the CESifo Network centred in Munich. Prof. Davies has consulted for the Ontario and federal governments as well as for the UN and the World Bank. From 1992 to 2001 he was Chair of the Economics Department at UWO, and since 2001 he has been the Director of Western’s Economic Policy Research Institute. In July 2005 he was appointed Managing Editor of Canadian Public Policy.