personal wealth from a global perspective jan 2009

[...]... ideas and helpful comments as well UNU-WIDER staff provided excellent assistance Many thanks are due to our project assistant, Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen, who handled administrative aspects, organized the project meeting, and provided editorial assistance Adam Swallow provided valuable advice throughout Sincere thanks are also due to Barbara Fagerman, Ara Kazandjian, Sherry Ruuskanen, and Bruck Tadesse... United Nations Statistics Division USAID United States Agency for International Development WIID World Income Inequality Database (UNU WIDER) xxiv 1 An Overview of Personal Wealth James B Davies This volume examines personal assets or wealth from a global perspective Wealth is the value of physical and financial assets minus debts It is a crucial determinant of well-being, and is being studied carefully... Monetary Policy Committee (Bank of England) MST Landless Rural Worker’s Movement (Brazil) MWA mean wealth above NATSEM National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (Australia) NBER National Bureau of Economic Research (USA) NBS National Bureau of Statistics NCAER National Council of Applied Economic Research (India) NDA National Institute for Agricultural Development (Brazil) NGO non governmental... household wealth per capita and its composition, rural, urban, and all China, 1995 and 2002 99 5.3 Cumulative share of wealth in decile groups, rural, urban, and all China, 1995 and 2002 100 5.4 Wealth inequality and its decomposition by factor, rural, urban, and all China, 1995 and 2002 102 5.5 Market and subsidized housing prices, urban China, 1995 106 5.6 Decomposition of national wealth inequality... surveys are available for 1988 (rural areas only), 1995, and 2002 The latter two surveys look at rural and urban sectors separately and together As set out by Li and Zhao in Chapter 5, wealth inequality, while apparently still low by international standards, has been rapidly increasing This parallels the trend in income inequality In 1995 the Gini coefficient for wealth in China as a whole was 0.40... that wealthy individuals may hold much of their assets offshore These assets should be included, but it may be very difficult to estimate their value A further conceptual issue is the relationship between personal and national wealth Ultimately, all wealth must belong to people It might therefore seem that a country’s personal wealth and its national wealth should be the same However, national balance... is that, whereas labour earnings are easy to measure while the value of human capital is not, the situation is the opposite for physical and financial capital In the latter case, income is often unobserved or badly measured and the value of the stock is more easily estimated Most assets are bought and sold and have values that can in principle be observed To take an example of practical importance,... necessary to add net foreign wealth and to deduct the wealth of the state, NPOs and other non -personal sectors There can be large differences between domestic and personal wealth in countries with a large (positive or negative) net foreign balance, or in countries with state ownership of large natural resources It appears that no one has yet attempted to generate national or personal sector wealth numbers... official participant in the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS), which aims to develop internationally comparable household wealth survey data 6 An Overview of Personal Wealth the USA has excellent survey evidence, attention is still paid to estate taxbased results as a check and an alternative way of viewing the distribution.6 Finally, there are household surveys While these have many advantages, they are subject... Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey HMT Her Majesty’s Treasury (UK) IBGE Brazilian Census Bureau IBRA Brazilian Institute for Agrarian Reform ICRW International Center for Research on Women IDRC International Development Research Centre (Canada) IDS Income Distribution Surveys IFLS Indonesian Family Life Survey ILO International Labour Organization IMF International Monetary Fund INCRA National . Net values of household wealth per capita and its composition, rural, urban, and all China, 1995 and 2002 99 5.3 Cumulative share of wealth in decile groups, rural, urban, and all China, 1995 and. circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging. Prinsloo 196 11. Asset Portfolios in Africa: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia Christian Rogg 224 12. Marketable Wealth in a Poor African Country: Wealth Accumulation by Households in Ghana Ronelle Burger,