World Bank says global wealth grows while inequality persists
Global wealth grew significantly over the past two decades while wealth inequality persists, a latest report released by the World Bank showed on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.
Global wealth, which includes produced capital, natural capital, human capital, and net foreign assets, grew 66 percent from 1995 to reach 1,143 trillion U.S. dollars in 2014, the World Bank said in the report The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018.
It found that the concentration of wealth among high-income countries reduced significantly between 1995 and 2014. Wealth is starting to be spread among a larger set of countries in the middle and at the top, but low-income countries are still lagging behind, said the report It noted that middle-income countries are catching up in large part because of rapid growth in Asia.
The report attributed the convergence in wealth to the accumulation of human capital, which has benefited from massive investments to improve education and health outcomes.
However, inequality remained substantial during the period, as per capita wealth in high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was 52 times greater than in low-income countries, the report found.
The report tracks the wealth of 141 countries between 1995 and 2014 by aggregating natural capital, human capital, produced capital and net foreign assets.
According to the World Bank, human capital was the largest component of the wealth overall while natural capital made up nearly half of wealth in low-income countries.