Wealth: Uneven Distribution in Greece

In 2023, global wealth recovered from the previous year's decline. The sign was consistently positive worldwide, with a few exceptions. The percentage of people in the bottom wealth group fell compared to previous years, but Greece seemed to have… “missed the train.”

According to the latest report on global wealth from Swiss banking giant UBS, our country recorded a decline of 15,000 in the fifteen years from 2008 to 2023. a 31% reduction in average wealth, wherein the greatest losses are suffered by the poorest sections of the population.

The report (Global Wealth Report 2024) also notes stagnation in our country despite global economic developmentand it turns out that the distribution of wealth continues to become more and more uneven.

Pyramid of wealth in Greece
As the investment house reports, Greece is among three European countries showing a negative trend in wealth growthalong with Italy and Spain. Rome and Madrid saw a “fall” in average wealth, while Athens saw both average and median wealth fall by 31% and 11% respectively. The data, the report’s authors say, suggests that wealth is concentrated at the top of the pyramid.

According to a UBS report, the average wealth of Greeks rose to $109,838 per adult in 2023. However, the median wealth was only $55,695 per adult.

1.8 million Greeks are in debt
This difference is observed because the group of particularly rich people at the top of the Greek pyramid increases the overall average wealth of the population as a whole. This distortion highlights, at the very least, the extent of inequality that exists between the upper and lower classes.

The Greek wealth pyramid in 2023 includes about 81,000 millionaires with a total wealth exceeding $224 billion. Nearly two million have a personal wealth of between $100,000 and $1 million, and a total wealth of $478 billion. The majority of Greeks, 4.275 million, have an individual wealth of between $10,000 and $100,000.V.

At the bottom of the pyramid are 1.8 million Greeks with individual wealth of less than $10,000 and a total negative asset (debt) position of $1.48 billion.

In conclusion, the data from the report show that Greece was far from restoring the global prosperity seen over the past fifteen years.Of course, we must not forget that our country has experienced at least ten years of “suffocation” due to a series of memoranda, which set it back many years. People at the bottom of the wealth ladder have borne the brunt of the overall decline. The report highlights that, according to the Gini coefficient, inequality in Greece has increased by more than 17% since 2008.

The US has the most millionaires
Last year, overall growth in global wealth was driven mainly by countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

According to UBS analysis, the United States has the largest number of millionaires in the world, with almost 22 million. China is second, with just over six million million, about twice as many as the third-largest country, the United Kingdom. No other country has more than three million millionaires. Japan, Germany and France have slightly fewer millionaires than Britain, while Canada and Australia have fewer than two million.

What the Future Holds for Wealth Around the World
Looking ahead to 2028, the banking giant makes estimates on how global capital might evolve. The forecast shows that developing countries' share of global wealth will exceed 30% in 2024, rising to nearly 32% by 2028, while the share of adults living in the lowest wealth tier will continue to decline over the next five years.

By 2028, the number of adults with a net worth of more than $1 million will increase to 52 of the 56 markets sampled. In Japan and Korea, the number of dollar millionaires will grow by more than 25%, and in Taiwan by almost 50%.

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