Growing wealth gap could trigger next recession: report

Some new statistics to make investors feel even worse while watching the stock markets sink: A new study shows the richest 1 per cent of the world’s population are getting richer and own almost half of global wealth.

According to the annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, global personal wealth grew by 8.3 per cent US$263-trillion last year, creating a greater divided between the rich and poor that could trigger a recession.

“The overall global economy may remain sluggish, but this has not prevented personal wealth from surging ahead during the past year,” the report states.

It says the world’s wealthiest hold 87 per cent of the global wealth, and the top percentile alone account for 48.2 per cent of assets. Meantime, the bottom half of the global population own less than 1 per cent of total wealth.

It says that 3.3 billion people, more than 70 per cent of adults worldwide, have wealth below $10,000.

The report says global median wealth - which is the minimum net worth of the top half of global adults – has fallen every year since 2010, “a surprising result given the robust rise in mean wealth.”

“We should always be worried about inequality,” Credit Suisse’s Markus Stierli told the Wall Street Journal.

The report says the U.S. saw the biggest increase in wealth, with $31.5 trillion added to household worth in that country since 2008. It also notes the ratio of wealth income is at levels not seen since the Great Depression.

“This is a worrying signal given that abnormally high wealth income ratios have always signaled recession in the past,” the report states.

Oxfam International says the report shows the world’s poorest are paying the price of the recent financial crisis, while the rich have bounced back.

“These figures give more evidence that inequality is extreme and growing, and that economic recovery following the financial crisis has been skewed in favour of the wealthiest,” Oxfam’s head of inequality Emma Seery said in a statement.

How Canada fares

The report says household wealth grew at an annual rate of 7.1 per cent in Canada between 2000 and 2004, in U.S. dollar terms. It says the wealth per Canadian adult is $274,500, which is 21-per-cent lower than the U.S. at $347,800.

“Canada is similar to the U.S. in that more than half of its household wealth is held in financial assets,” the report states. “But wealth is more equally distributed. “

It says Canada has a much higher median wealth of $98,800, versus $53,400 in the U.S.

Canada has both a smaller percentage of people with less than $10,000 and a larger percentage with wealth above $100,000.

Canada has 1,138,000 millionaires who account for 3 per cent of the top 1 per cent of global wealth holders, the report says. That’s even though it has just 0.5 per cent of the world’s population.