I was reading an article from 2015 stating that 1% of the world has half of the world wealth. They have several figures such as the world's billionaries have around 7 trillions dollars or the global world wealth pyramid which shows a percent of population by percent of the total wealth etc. but I can't see anywhere a figure of the total wealth of the world. Which is it?
1 Answer
Your article probably resulted from an Oxfam campaign
If you believe table 2 of a January 2015 Oxfam report then about $\$250$ trillion. The campaign spliced together some information from Forbes on the richest $x$ individuals and a series of Credit Suisse reports - see the bottom of page 94
The analysis has faced criticism: it concentrates on individual assets and liabilities, e.g. a US doctor whose student debt exceeds personal financial assets counts as poorer than a subsistence farmer in Africa, and uses a very large amount of estimation, so other reasonable calculations could be very different
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$\begingroup$ it doesnt seem much, do you know if there's another source which says differently? $\endgroup$– PabloCommented Aug 2, 2016 at 20:44
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1$\begingroup$ @Pablo Savills estimated that real estate was worth $\$217$ trillion - three quarters of it residential - and this was $60\%$ of the global mainstream asset universe of $\$372$ trillion. So $\$122$ trillion different but a similar order of magnitude to the Oxfam/Credit Suisse number. Even if you managed to come up with an average of $\$100,000$ per person you would not get above $\$740$ trillion, and remember there are a lot of children and poor adults in the world $\endgroup$– HenryCommented Aug 2, 2016 at 21:18
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$\begingroup$ A recent report in The Economist said "Between 2000 and 2020 it [wealth] rose from $\$160$trn, or four times global output, to $\$510$trn, or six times output. Although much of this is tied up in property or other assets, the pool of liquid assets is still vast, making up a quarter of the total." $\endgroup$– HenryCommented Sep 6, 2023 at 8:33