Global wealth increases along with inequality

Time to check who has got what.

The latest Global Wealth Report shows the richest one percent of the world’s population are piling up more cash and inequality continues to grow.

According to the annual calculations by the bean counters at Credit Suisse global wealth grew at the fastest rate ever over the last year .. rising by 8.3 percent.

The top one percent owns almost half of the planet’s wealth, while income inequality got worse in three three countries – including Britain, the only G7 nation where that was the case.

The geographic breakdown: North America has the largest share of total wealth at 34.7 percent.

With a bigger but poorer population, Europe has 32.4 percent.

The Asia-Pacific region – excluding China and India – has 18.9 percent and China alone 8.1 percent.

The report says overall wealth in the US has grown faster than incomes and points out that in the past abnormally high wealth to income ratios have occured in the run up to recession.

It is all relative, with so many extremely poor people in the world .. particularly in Africa, India and Latin America, which are at the bottom of the pile in terms of distribution of global wealth, you don’t have to be that rich to be classified as wealthly – if you are worth $3,650, that’s 2,860 euros, you are in the top half of the world’s citizens.