Share Of The Wealth 1% of
population owns 23 % of wealth
The wealthiest 1 per cent owned
approximately a quarter of the UK's marketable wealth
in 2001. In contrast, half the population shared only
5 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.
