Every year, Boston Consulting Group captures the world's wealth in their Global Wealth Report. Based on data from 150 prominent wealth advisors, the report examines global wealth trends, the locations of the most ultra-rich individuals, and who is gaining or losing wealth.
This year’s report has revealed that Germans are among the richest people worldwide: only the US and China have more individuals with financial assets worth more than $100 million dollars (currently the equivalent of around €91 million) than Germany.
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Around 2,900 people belong to this ultra-rich category and they collectively own 21 percent of the country's total financial assets, significantly higher than the figures for the whole of Western Europe (17 percent) and the other 97 countries analysed globally (13 percent).
Unequal wealth distribution
Despite ranking third in the world for the number of ultra-rich individuals, wealth distribution in Germany is notably unequal. While Germany's income distribution falls within the average range compared to other EU countries, the picture is different when it comes to wealth.
The Gini coefficient, a key measure of inequality ranging from zero (perfect equality) to 100 (complete inequality), stood at approximately 30 in Germany in 2020, mirroring the EU average.
However, according to Oxfam, the entire poorer half of the population owns just 1.3 percent of the wealth in Germany, while the richest ten percent own 67.3 percent, and the top 0.1 percent own a staggering 20.4 percent.
"The gap between the rich and the poor is very wide in Germany," Marcel Fratzscher from the German Institute for Economic Research told t-online. "Among Western countries, we have the highest level of inequality in wealth and savings.
A recent report by the Berliner Morgenpost put the wealth distribution figures in context, revealing that, if Germany consisted of only ten people, the wealthiest person would possess about two-thirds of the country's entire wealth and the remaining third would be divided among the rest.
For every €100 owned by the richest person, the other nine individuals would only have €5.55 each in savings.
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