Tyler talked about wealth in Russia; how about the entire world?

 


 Wealth is concentrated worldwide.

Figure 1 shows  “The global wealth pyramid” in striking detail. It is made up of a solid
base of low wealth holders with upper tiers occupied by fewer and fewer
people. We estimate that 3 billion individuals – more than two thirds
of the global adult population – have wealth below USD 10,000. A further
billion adults (24% of the world population) are placed in the USD
10,000–100,000 range, leaving 358 million adults (8% of the world
population) with  assets above USD 100,000. Figures for mid-2010
indicate that 24.2 million adults are above the threshold for dollar
millionaires. While they make up less than 1% of the global adult
population, they own more than a third of global household wealth. More
specifically, individuals with wealth above USD 50 million are estimated
to number 81,000 worldwide.

To assemble details of the pattern of wealth holdings above USD 1 million requires a high degree of ingenuity. The usual sources of data – official statistics and sample surveys – become increasingly incomplete and unreliable at high wealth levels. A growing number of publications have followed the example of Forbes magazine by constructing “rich lists,” which attempt to value the assets of particular named individuals at the apex of the wealth pyramid. But very little is known about the global pattern of asset holdings in the high net worth (HNW – greater than USD 1 million) and ultra high net worth (UHNW – from USD 50 million upwards) range.
We bridge this gap by exploiting well-known statistical regularities in the top wealth tail. Using only data from traditional sources in the public  domain yields a pattern of global wealth holdings in the USD 250,000 to USD 5 million range, which, when projected onward, predicts about  1000 dollar billionaires for mid-2010. Although not exactly comparable, this number is very close to the figure of 1,011 billionaire holdings reported by Forbes magazine for February 2010. Making use of the regional affiliation recorded in rich lists allows us to merge the top tail  details with data on the level and distribution of wealth derived from traditional sources in order to generate a regional breakdown of HNW and UHNW individuals. At this time, we do not attempt to estimate the pattern of holdings across particular countries, except China and India which are treated as separate regions. However, as a rule of thumb, residents of the USA account for about 90% of the figure for North America.
The base of the wealth pyramid is occupied by people from all countries of the world at various stages of their lifecycle. In contrast, HNW and UHNW individuals are heavily concentrated in particular regions and countries, but the members tend to share a much more similar lifestyle,  often participating in the same global markets for high coupon consumption items. The wealth portfolios of individuals are also likely to be  similar, dominated by financial assets and, in particular, equity holdings in public companies traded in international markets. For these reasons, using official exchange rates to value assets is more appropriate, rather than using local price levels to compare wealth holdings.
Our figures for mid-2010 indicate that there were 24.5 million HNW individuals with wealth from USD 1 million to USD 50 million, of whom the vast majority (22 million) fall in the USD 1–5 million range. North America dominates the residence ranking, accounting for 11.1 million HNW individuals (45% of the total). Europe accounts for 7.8 million (31.7%) and 4.1 million reside in Asia-Pacific countries other than China and India. We estimate that there are now more than 800,000 HNW individuals in China, each worth between USD 1 million and USD 50 million (3.3% of the global total). India, Africa and Latin America together host the remaining 740,000 HNW individuals (3.0% of the total).




 All of this is from:
A Detailed Look At Global Wealth Distribution | Zero Hedge

Of course, you could also argue that most people are better off today than any other time in history so what's the problem here?