The top 10 per cent of the population owns 100 times more wealth than the bottom 10 per cent, a briefing paper has highlighted. The paper was prepared for the University of Birmingham’s new Policy Commission on the Distribution of Wealth, launched in September 2012.

Key points

• The distribution of wealth is highly unequal, with the top 10 per cent owning 100 times more than the bottom 10 per cent. The distribution of wealth is much more unequal than the distribution of income.
• The most unequal type of wealth is financial wealth, followed by private pension wealth and then property wealth. A quarter of the population have negative net financial wealth, whereas just over 10 per cent have net financial wealth of over £100,000.
• There is a clear link between wealth and age, with those in the 55–64 age group having the highest levels of wealth. But there is considerable inequality within this age group: the lowest decile have less than £28,000 of wealth on average compared with the top decile who have more than £1.3 million.
• There is also considerable variation according to ethnicity and religion. Those from Black African and Bangladeshi groups have particularly low levels of wealth, as do Muslims.
• It is difficult, conceptually and practically, to distinguish between men and women's wealth in couples. However, lone parents – mostly women – have particularly low levels of wealth.
• Since 1995, relative wealth inequality may have fallen due to those in the middle benefiting from house price inflation. But those at the very top have seen huge absolute increases in wealth and there are still significant numbers of people with no or indeed negative net wealth.
• The UK appears to have relatively high levels of personal wealth inequality compared with countries with stronger welfare states (such as Sweden and Finland), but lower levels of inequality than the USA.

Source: Karen Rowlingson, Wealth Inequality: Key Facts, Policy Commission on the Distribution of Wealth (University of Birmingham)
Link: Briefing