The Unassuming Economist

On December 7th, 2021, the World Inequality Lab released the World Inequality Report 2022, authored by the Lab’s co-director and economist Lucas Chancel and economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Through the course of its 10 chapters, the report covers insights on themes like changing global economic inequality, the rise of multimillionaires, the disproportionate burden of labor income discrimination on women, carbon inequalities, tax justice, and sustainability. Some notable statistics from the report yield the following results:

1. Income inequality: Globally, the richest 10% of the population currently earns 52% of the global income, whereas the poorest half of the population earns 8% of it. On average, an individual from the top 10% of the global income distribution earns €87,200 (USD122,100) per year, whereas an individual from the poorest half of the global income distribution makes €2,800 (USD3,920) per year.
2. Wealth inequality: The poorest half of the global population barely owns any wealth at all, possessing just 2% of the total. In contrast, the richest 10% of the global population own 76% of all wealth. On average, the poorest half of the population owns PPP €2,900 per adult, i.e. USD4,100 and the top 10% own €550,900 (or USD771,300) on average.
3. Regional variations in inequality: In Europe, the top 10% income share is around 36%, whereas in MENA it reaches 58%. In between these two levels, we see a diversity of patterns. In East Asia, the top 10% makes 43% of total income and in Latin America, 55%. Moreover, while some countries have experienced spectacular increases in inequality (including the US, Russia and India) others like European countries and China have only experienced a little rise.
4. Nations have become richer, but governments have grown poorer: Private wealth has grown immensely but the share of the public sector in total national wealth is close or euqal to 0 in rich countries.
5. Gender inequalities in labor income: Women’s share of total incomes from work (labor income) neared 30% in 1990 and stands at less than 35% today

The report also includes excerpts from Thomas Piketty’s upcoming book titled, ‘A brief history of inequality‘, slated for release in 2022 in the concluding chapter.

Click here to access the full report.

While it has been postulated for long that wealth and aggregate income in the economy go hand in hand, developments in the last several decades point to a different phenomenon as the wealth to GDP ratio has been rising rapidly, reaching 6.1 times the GDP currently.

In a recent column for the Conversable Economist, Timothy Taylor writes on the issue, drawing insights from a 2021 McKinsey Global Institute report.

“…At the level of the global economy, the historical link between the growth of wealth, or net worth, and the value of economic flows such as GDP no longer holds. Economic growth has been sluggish over the past two decades in advanced economies, but net worth, which long tracked GDP growth, has soared in relation to it. This divergence has emerged as asset prices rose sharply—and are now almost 50 percent higher than the long-run average relative to income. The increase was not a result of 21st-century trends such as the increasing digitization of the economy. Rather, in an economy increasingly propelled by intangible assets, a glut of savings has struggled to find investments offering sufficient economic returns and lasting value to investors. These (ex-ante) savings have instead found their way into a traditional asset class, real estate, or into corporate share buybacks, driving up asset prices.”

Source: McKinsey Global Institute. (2021). The rise and rise of the global balance sheet: How productively are we using our wealth?

Real estate, rather than an ongoing investment boom in the 10 countries under study, is attributed to this rapid rise in global wealth. Furthermore, the study offers possible explanations for the consequences that such a trend might bring with it in the future- some happy and some not so happy ones.

Read on to know more. Click here.

In a recent column for Vox EU CEPR, Professor Daniel Waldenström of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics and senior fellow at CEPR writes about the conundrum of rapidly rising wealth-income ratios in the post-WW II period not translating into a reversal of trends of wealth concentration of the previous century.

While it is true that aggregate wealth to income ratios have risen in this period, it has not led to large-scale wealth equalization since private wealth has just changed hands over the 20th century, from being held by richer classes to now being largely held by the middle class. Previously in the 1900s, wealth was dominated by agricultural estates and corporate wealth, assets predominantly held by the rich. However, this changed in the post-war period as wealth accumulation mainly acquired the form of housing and funded pensions, which are assets held by ordinary people.

“Wealth concentration was exceptionally high a century ago, with the richest percentile owning between 50% and 70% of all private wealth. From the 1920s to the 1970s, wealth concentration fell dramatically in the Western world. Country studies confirm the importance of homeownership and pension savings for this equalisation trend. In the 1970s, wealth equalisation stopped, but then Europe and the US follow separate paths. In Europe, top wealth shares stabilise at historically low levels, perhaps with a slight increasing tendency, while in the US, top wealth shares have increased (exactly by how much is currently debated).”

Waldenström, D. (2021). Wealth and history: A reappraisal. Vox EU CEPR.

Results from this study cast influence on society’s understanding of the long-run evolution of wealth as we see it. They question the view that unfettered capitalism generates extreme levels of capital accumulation. They also cast doubt on the explanation that wars, crises, and capital taxation are necessary for wealth equalization.

Click here to read the full article.