Beijing:Global wealth tripled over the last two decades, with China leading the way and overtaking the US for the top spot worldwide, Bloomberg reported.
A report by McKinsey & Co. that examines the national balance sheets of ten countries representing more than 60 per cent of the world's income, says China accounted for almost one-third of gains in global net worth over the past two decades.
"We are now wealthier than we have ever been," Jan Mischke, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute in Zurich, said in an interview.
Net worth worldwide rose to $514 trillion in 2020, from $156 trillion in 2000, according to the study.
China accounted for almost one-third of the increase.
Its wealth skyrocketed to $120 trillion from a mere $7 trillion in 2000, the year before it joined the World Trade Organization, speeding its economic ascent, the report added.
Interestingly, in China, the top 10 percent of households owned 48 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2000, and by 2015, those households owned 67 percent.
The US, held back by more muted increases in property prices, saw its net worth more than double over the period, to $90 trillion.
In both countries -- the world's biggest economies -- more than two-thirds of the wealth is held by the richest 10 per cent of households, and their share has been increasing, the report said.
As computed by McKinsey, 68 per cent of global net worth is stored in real estate.
The balance is held in such things as infrastructure, machinery and equipment and, to a much lesser extent, so-called intangibles like intellectual property and patents, it added.
Several factors shape the level of net worth relative to GDP across countries. They include resource endowments, trade balances, and investment rates as well as price levels of assets in comparison with consumer baskets. For example, Australia, Canada, and Mexico have considerable natural resources, while manufacturing exporters Germany and Japan hold significant net financial assets. China and Japan have some of the highest ratios of net worth to GDP.
Further the report said: "Among the ten countries, China accounted for 50 percent of the growth in net worth, or wealth, from 2000 to 2020, followed by the United States, at 22 percent. Japan, which held 31 percent of the ten economies’ wealth in 2000, held just 11 percent in 2020."
(With agency inputs)
