“…in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.” — Karl Marx, “Capital, Volume 1,” 1867
A new study by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations
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The UNU-WIDER report is “the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken,” according to the Dec. 5 press release announcing its publication. Its findings are dramatic.
The study reveals that the richest two percent of adults owned half of the world’s wealth in the year 2000. Further, it reports that 1 percent of adults alone owned 40 percent of global assets, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the adult world population owned barely one percent of global wealth that year.
“The research shows,” the report states, “that the global distribution of income is very unequal and the inequality has not been falling over time. In some regions poverty and income inequality have become much worse.”
The research finds that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000. To be among the richest 10 percent of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, but more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1 percent, which amounts to 37 million people worldwide.
The authors claim that the UNU-WIDER study is the first of its kind to cover all countries in the world and all major components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property.
Effects of imperialism
The study clearly reveals the impact of capitalist super-exploitation and imperialist oppression on global wealth disparities. For instance, on an official currency exchange rate basis average per capita household wealth ranged from about $1,100 for India to $144,000 for the United States to $188,000 for Japan in the year 2000.
Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe, and high-income Asia-Pacific countries such as Japan. The study found that people in these, mostly imperialist, countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth. Although North America has only 6 percent of the world adult population, it accounts for 34 percent of household wealth.
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Some of the formerly poorest countries, however, have through progressive, deep-going revolutions made significant headway in economic development. For example, according to the study, “China appears to be about twice as wealthy as India, having per capita net worth of $11,267 on a PPP [cost-of-living] basis or $2,613 using official exchange rates.”
Despite a U.S.-imposed economic blockade lasting for more than 45 years, socialist Cuba has achieved an even higher level. The UNU-WIDER study lists the island nation’s per capita net worth as $12,086 on a PPP basis or $4,587 using official exchange rates.
Wide disparities within countries
Within each of these countries—except for Cuba—there exists great disparities of wealth and income, of course. The concentration of wealth within countries varies significantly, according to the study, but is generally high: “The share of the top 10 percent [of adults] ranges from around 40 percent in China to 70 percent in the United States, and higher still in other countries.”
The authors go on to note, “[M]any people in high-income countries have negative net worth and—somewhat paradoxically—are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth.”
Income and wealth disparities in the United States are detailed by Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz in an article posted on his university website in February 2006. The facts and figures presented are taken from “Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.,” an unpublished manuscript by E. N. Wolff (2004), and other sources.
Domhoff states, “In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).”
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Domhoff writes in the same article that the top 10 percent own 85 to 90 percent of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75 percent of non-home real estate. He concludes: “Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets [is concerned], we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”
Click here to read the full UNU-WIDER study.
