Launch of the UNU-WIDER book 'Personal Wealth from a Global Perspective'
Sean Crowley
The UNU-WIDER book Personal Wealth from a Global Perspective was officially launched on Tuesday 24 March at LSE’s Honk Kong Theatre in central London. The aim of the event was to present the book and its key findings to the press and scholars in order to generate interest in the volume at a time of increased flux in the global financial system.
The event was chaired by UNU-WIDER’s Director, Anthony Shorrocks. Speakers at the launch included the book’s editor, James Davies of the University of Western Ontario, along with Sir Anthony Atkinson of Nuffield College Oxford, one of the world’s leading thinkers on income and wealth distribution. UNU-WIDER’s Wim Naudé also spoke about how wealth inequality was impacting on entrepreneurship – one of the keys for poor people to weather the current global economic slowdown.
The book is the first to systematically document the extent of the distribution of personal (household) wealth across the world. It deals with the rich and the super-rich, wealth in developing and transition countries, the role of personal assets in economic development and performance, and also provides a global picture of the distribution of wealth. The book shows that the richest 10 percent of adults in the world own 85 percent of global household wealth. Of these individuals, almost half are living in the US and Japan. The common measure of inequality, the Gini-coefficient, ranges from 0.65 to 0.75 for the distribution of within-country wealth.
Another feature of the distribution of wealth is that the rich (advanced countries) hold greater proportions of wealth in financial assets than poorer or middle income households (countries) where wealth is predominantly held in real assets such as land, houses and farm infrastructure.
All of the presenters touched upon the implications of the current financial and economic crisis for the distribution of wealth, voicing concerns that the distribution of wealth may become even more unequal, and that the right response of governments, particularly towards providing social safety nets and allowing the middle class to rebuild wealth, may be important to prevent such an occurrence.
Given the extent of the global economic downturn, media and academic interest in the volume was high, especially given the experience and acclaim of the panel launching the book. James Davies completed an interview with BBC World Service the day before, and this was broadcast overnight to an audience of millions. A number of other journalists attended the launch including the BBC Economics Correspondent, a reporter from the Observer and representatives of foreign press and broadcast organizations based in London.
Personal Wealth from a Global Perspective was published by Oxford University Press in December 2008.
