Sharing the wealth
Via the International Monetary Fund:
Income inequality among people around the world has been declining in recent decades. But the news is not all good. Inequality within many countries has increased, particularly in advanced economies.
In addition to income inequality, wealth inequality—what you have accumulated, as opposed to what you earn—is closely related, and reflects differences in savings, inheritances, and bequests.
In our Chart of the Week from the October Fiscal Monitor, we zoom in on inequality of wealth—the distribution of wealth across households or individuals at a given time.
Not sure for the other countries but he graph title “wealth, such as PENSIONS and investments…” is quite misleading with regards to the US as the SCF does not count pensions as household assets.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2014/pdf/scf14.pdf
“39 Although tax-deferred retirement assets are clearly an important element in retirement planning, families may hold a variety of other assets that are intended, at least in part, to finance retirement. Two common and often particularly important types of retirement plans are not included in the assets described in this section: Social Security (the federally funded Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance program (OASI)) and employer-sponsored defined-benefit plans. OASI is well described elsewhere, and it covers the great majority of the population (See Social Security Administration, “Online Social Security Handbook: Your Basic Guide to the Social Security Programs,” Publication 65-008, http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/handbook.) The retirement income provided by defined-benefit plans is typically based on workers’ salaries and years of work with an employer, a group of employers, or a union. Unfortunately, future income streams from OASI and defined-benefit plans cannot be translated directly into a current value because valuation depends critically on assumptions about future events and conditions—work decisions, earnings, inflation rates, discount rates, mortality, and so on—and no widely agreed-upon standards exist for making these assumptions.”