As if the nagging feeling of average folks needed confirmation, the European Central Bank just published a Working Paper saying that the rich are somewhat richer than we thought.
The paper's title is statistical lingo but happens to make a very catchy one for non-experts:
How fat is the top tail of the wealth distribution?
For Europeans who until now have pointed to their own official statistics and said, well, we have a big proportion of wealth owned by one or five percent of the population, but look at how big the difference is in the U.S., the study serves as a damper.
The study author uses the two common surveys of wealth distribution plus the Forbes Rich list and does his magic.
The result for the Germans on the Forbes list?
Table 4 of the paper says 53 Germans on the Forbes list own 2.4% of the country's wealth.
This is one tenth of a percent higher than for the U.S., where 396 individuals own 2.3% of the country's wealth.
This result is in stark contrast to the image of Germany as a more egalitarian, more unionized, or - as the old term would have it - more "socialist" society.
The U.S. and Germany are the only two out of ten countries listed that exceed the 2% share. The next highest one is Austria at 1.2, and everybody else in that table is under 1%.
Our take home point from the working paper?
Life is full of surprises. And we look forward to see what the "other press" makes out of the study.
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