Share Of The Wealth
1% of population owns 21% of wealth
Distribution of wealth
The wealthiest 1 per cent owned approximately a fifth of the UK's marketable wealth in 2003. In contrast, half the population shared only 7 per cent of total wealth. The results are even more skewed if housing is excluded from the estimates, suggesting this form of wealth is more evenly distributed.
Wealth is considerably less evenly distributed than income, and life cycle effects mean that this will almost always be so. People build up assets during the course of their working lives and then draw them down during the years of retirement, with the residue passing to others at their death.
Source: Inland Revenue personal wealth
Notes:
Definition of wealth: the estimates of the distribution of people's marketable wealth relate to all adults in the United Kingdom. They are produced by combining Inland Revenue estimates derived from the estate multiplier method and ONS national accounts balance sheet estimates.
Estimates for individual years should be treated with caution as they are affected by sampling error and patterns of deaths in that year.
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Social Trends 2006