Wealth

This passage details a study done about wealth.

Lexile Level: 1160L

Categories: People & Places

In 2006, the United Nations conducted a study that revealed some startling new data on worldwide wealth distribution. According to the U.N., the richest two percent of all adults in the world own more than half of all the wealth. The study also found that 90 percent of the world's wealth is concentrated in North America, Europe, and a few counties in the Asian Pacific region such as Japan and Australia. The study is one of the most extensive ever conducted because it covers every country in the world. It looked at wealth as opposed to income. Wealth is defined as what people own, including land, animals, and financial assets, minus what they owe. Wealth is, in some ways, more important than income since it acts as a kind of insurance against those times when income may fall. Wealth also helps determine the strength of a country's financial system.