Global Wealth Monitor

This project constructs consistent wealth distributions for all countries over time and combines them into a global distribution, drawing on surveys, national accounts and top-wealth estimates to enable cross-country comparisons and track trends in global wealth inequality.

Wealth inequality has important economic, social and political consequences, yet it remains far less well documented than income inequality. Wealth data are available for fewer countries and fewer years, and methods and definitions are less standardized.

This project constructs consistent wealth distributions for every country in the world over time and aggregates them into a global distribution. We assemble data from household balance sheets, national accounts, survey-based wealth distributions, and independent estimates of top wealth holders. Using transparent, state-of-the-art statistical methods, we generate synthetic wealth distributions that reconcile available sources and ensure cross-country comparability. These estimates allow us to track global trends, examine regional patterns, and make meaningful comparisons across countries and over time.

The project builds on the pioneering work on global wealth by Jim Davies and Tony Shorrocks, first developed at UNU-WIDER and later used in the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, extending and updating this tradition with improved data coverage and methods.