# Global wealth/income, the division of, etc.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 15, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393 "2013-05-15T12:07:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Toilet\_Bowels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de053/32.png) [@Toilet\_Bowels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toilet_Bowels)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393/1 "2013-05-15T12:07:31Z")

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When people quote stats saying 1% of the world’s pop controls 99% of the wealth (or whatever) where do they get these figures? Who calculated them? How much wealth is there in the world, and how is that wealth defined (eg. purely monetary, or also control of natural resources etc)? And what would the annual income be/person if that wealth was evenly divided?

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**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393/2 "2013-05-15T20:06:05Z")

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> [@Toilet\_Bowels](#):
>
> And what would the annual income be/person if that wealth was evenly divided?

Don’t have a actual number, but I would theorize that the following year after all of the wealth was evenly divided that the average annual income per person would significantly decline, as there would be no motivation to work harder to generate more income if no matter how hard you worked your wealth generation was going to be divided amongst everyone, even those that didn’t do a damn thing.

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**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393/3 "2013-05-15T22:19:04Z")

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Here’s the [big study](http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/) from which those figures were generated.

> [@](#):
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> The UNU-WIDER study is the first of its kind to cover all countries in the world and all major components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property.

I’m not sure about income, but the study found that if all of the wealth in the world were divided equally among the world population, we would each get about $26,000.

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**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-wealth-income-the-division-of-etc/658393/4 "2013-05-15T23:05:43Z")

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> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> Don’t have a actual number, but I would theorize that the following year after all of the wealth was evenly divided that the average annual income per person would significantly decline, as there would be no motivation to work harder to generate more income if no matter how hard you worked your wealth generation was going to be divided amongst everyone, even those that didn’t do a damn thing.

I bet you are wrong. I’d love to try it and see.