The ABS has released its biennial Household Income and Wealth survey, which confirms that wealth inequality has unambiguously worsened:
The distribution of wealth is more unequal than the distribution of income. Graph 1 shows that the wealthiest 20% of Australian households owned 63% of total household wealth in 2017–18. By comparison, the lowest 20% of households owned less than 1% of all household wealth…
The lowest 20% of households, in terms of net worth, had a mean net worth of $35,200. In comparison, the mean net worth of the wealthiest 20% of households was more than 93 times that of the lowest 20% of households, at $3.2 million. The mean net worth of all households in Australia in 2017–18 was $1.0 million while the median was much lower at $558,900…
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Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
