HELSINKI, Dec 5: The world's richest two per cent of adults own more than half of global household wealth, while half the world's population own only one per cent, a UN report published on Tuesday showed.

“The study finds wealth to be more unequally distributed than income across countries,” Anthony Shorrocks, director of the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER) that published the report, said at a press conference.

The report, entitled “The World Distribution of Household Wealth”, found that assets of $2,200 or more placed a household in the top half of world wealth distribution in 2000.

To be among the most affluent 10 per cent of adults required $61,000 in assets, while over $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest one per cent. This group of the most well off was made up of 37 million people.

The study said it was the first of its kind to include major components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property, and to cover all the world's countries.

The report did not measure income, in the form of salaries, pensions and benefit payments.

A quarter of the world's wealthiest 10 per cent of adults lived in the United States while a fifth resided in Japan, the study showed.

Eight per cent of the world's wealthiest 10 per cent of adults lived in Germany, seven per cent in Italy, six per cent in Britain and four per cent each in France and Spain.

The concentration of wealth within countries was also found to vary significantly.

“The share of the top 10 per cent (of wealth) ranges from around 40 per cent in China to 70 per cent in the United States, and higher still in other countries,” the report authors said.

In 2000, the year data for the survey was collected, there were 499 dollar-billionaires and 13 million millionaires throughout the world. These numbers were set to “rise fast in the next decade”, the report said.—AFP