Thanks to hearty growth from countries such as U.S. and China, the world is significantly wealthier in 2018 than it was the year prior.
2018 was a big growth year for the world’s economy. Overall, global wealth grew by $14 trillion to $317 trillion, a 4.6 % increase.
While that’s a smaller increase than 2017, it still outpaced population growth, meaning that, per adult, wealth grew by 3.2 %.
Leading that growth was North America, particularly the United States, where wealth grew 6.5 % to $107 trillion. U.S. wealth has grown every year since 2008.
While the overall world wealth per adult is now at $63,100, there’s significant geographical imbalance in its distribution.
In North America, Western Europe, and countries such as Japan and South Korea, for example, wealth per adult topped $100,000.
In contrast, the “intermediate wealth” group of countries with wealth per adult between $25,000 and $100,000 includes China, as well as emerging-market countries in Latin America and the Middle East.
Countries with wealth below $5,000 per adult are concentrated in Africa and parts of Asia.
Global wealth distribution is a pyramid: At the bottom are the 3.2 billion people (63.9 % the total population) around the world who have wealth below $10,000.
One tier above are the 1.3 billion adults with wealth between $10,000 and $100,000.
And at the top of the pyramid are the high wealth bands, which, despite accounting for just 9.5 % of the population, command 84 % of the world’s wealth – $266.7 trillion.
In less than 20 years, China’s total wealth has climbed from $3.7 TRILLION to $51.9 TRILLION – double the rate of any other country during that same time period. The country’s wealth increased by 4.6 % in the last year alone.
Another good indicator of China’s growth is in its number of millionaires, which is a strong indicator of both its overall economic health and its overall ability to create wealth. China added 186,000 millionaires last year, roughly double that of Japan.