the concentration of wealth in the world:
According to the study, for the world as a whole the share of the top 10 per cent was 85 per cent in the year 2000 and the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality between 0 and 1) equalled 0.892 at official exchange rates. This is an extraordinarily high value of the Gini coefficient and indicates extremely high concentration of wealth. For comparison, it can be noted that a recent study by Branko Milanovic found the Gini coefficient of world income to be 0.795 in 1998.
(...) As expected, the US is found to be the richest country even in personal wealth terms. The average wealth per person in the US is estimated to have been $144,000 in 2000. This compares with around $6,500 per person (in purchasing power parity or PPP terms) in India, which is at the bottom of the list of countries with wealth data. However, this does not mean that this is actually the lowest per capita wealth of all countries. The data used in the study are not comprehensive, and so a number of poor countries have been excluded for want of adequate data. So the actual wealth inequality across countries is likely to be even higher.
(...) The study also finds that the concentration of wealth within countries is high. Typical Gini coefficients for wealth distribution within countries lie in the range of about 0.65 - 0.75, and there are several above 0.8. In contrast, the mid-range for the Gini coefficients for income distribution is from about 0.35 – 0.45. So the concentration of wealth has become more acute than the concentration of income.
(...) In 2000, the richest 1 per cent of adults alone owned 40 per cent of global assets, and the richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of total world assets. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.