The richest 10 percent of the world’s population owns three-quarters of all personal wealth!
Where in the world are wealth and income most unequal?
By Marium Ali and Fatima Shafiq (Al Jazeera)
The richest 10 percent of the world’s population now owns three-quarters of all personal wealth, according to the newly released World Inequality Report 2026.
Income is not much different, where the top 50 percent of earners take home more than 90 percent, while the poorest half of the world receives less than 10 percent of total income.
he report, which has been published annually since 2018, notes that the 2026 edition arrives at a critical time. Worldwide, living standards are stagnating for many, while wealth and power are increasingly concentrated at the top.
The differences between wealth and income inequality
Wealth and income levels do not always go hand in hand. The wealthiest are not necessarily the highest earners, highlighting the persistent divide between what people earn and what they own.
Wealth includes the total value of a person’s assets-such as savings, investments or property, after subtracting their debts.
In 2025, the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population owned 75 percent of global wealth, the middle 40 percent held 23 percent, and the bottom half controlled only 2 percent.
Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centi-millionaires has grown by about 8 percent each year, almost twice the rate of the bottom half of the world’s population.
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