China has a bigger middle class than America

Global wealth dropped slightly to $250 trillion due to the impact of the relatively strong dollar on other currencies but inequality continued to widen in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the report says.

We find no statistically significant evidence from either approach that those banks who received increased deposits from QE lent more, all else equal. “Overall, dollar appreciation against other currencies reduced global wealth by roughly 10 percent, eliminating more than half of the rise in wealth per adult since the end of the financial crisis”.

“This year’s rise in equity prices and in the size of financial assets in high-wealth countries pushed up the wealth of a few of the richest countries and people, resulting in increased wealth inequality”, said Kersley.

Emerging economies were believed to be the main driver behind continuing wealth growth, with China and India expected to grow by nine per cent annually. Thiam however stressed that despite this imbalance, the economic significance of the world’s growing middle class must not be underestimated, particularly given their impact on consumer markets.

Singapore has a high proportion of middle-class adults (62 per cent), owning US$334 billion of wealth, 31 per cent of the country’s total. Likening global wealth distribution to a pyramid, it shows how wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top.

Of the total private wealth, the African continent accounts for US$2.5 trillion, down by 7.9%.

In the context of global wealth, Dollars 10,000-100,000 is the mid-range wealth band.

There are 34 million people, with a collective net worth of at least $1 million that make up 0.7 per cent of the world’s adult population accounting for 45 per cent of the world’s wealth. It also discovered that for the first time the middle class in China constituting 109 million individuals was more than the United States statistic of 92 million.

This is a 13.6% deterioration from $US431,000 in just 12 months but much of the fall can be put down to the rise in the USA dollar and the subsequent fall of the Australian dollar. Ultra-high net worth individuals, those with net assets above 50 million, now number 123,800, according to the study. China, whose wealth has grown fivefold since the beginning of the century, was shaken by market turmoil in the middle of the year, but still managed to add $1.5 trillion in wealth, Business Insider reports.