Key takeaways
To be in Australia’s top 1%, you need a net worth of approximately $8.3 million (US$5.5 million).
Australian household wealth has grown significantly, with the average household net worth increasing from $530,500 in 2004 to $1,462,300 in 2023. Wealth disparities are evident: the top 20% hold 63% of wealth, while the bottom 20% hold just 1%.
Property ownership is a cornerstone of wealth-building for Australians. Homeownership over a decade often results in significant increases in household wealth. Many Australians leverage property investment to grow their wealth beyond their primary residence.
Instead of criticizing the wealthy, the focus should be on improving financial literacy and skills for those in lower income brackets. Key strategies include learning money management, practicing delayed gratification, and investing in the future.
We know that true wealth is much more than how much money you’ve got in the bank or how many properties you own.
But you don’t have to look too far to see references to the top 1% of money earners and how disproportionate the distribution of wealth is.
The media loves to remind us of the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor.
According to most data, the top 10% of the world's population owns around 85% of the world's wealth, meaning the majority of global wealth is concentrated in the hands of this top tier.
- The top 10%: Holds roughly 85% of global wealth.
- The bottom 90%: Holds the remaining 15% of global wealth.
- The top 1%: A significant portion of this wealth is further concentrated within the top 1% of earners.
At the same time as economies fell into recession and many ordinary people lost their jobs and fell into poverty, many of the world’s billionaires increased their fortunes.
Each year Credit Suisse produces a Global Wealth Report showing how money is distributed around the world, and according to their 2024 report (released late last year), wealth growth across the world has recovered from its slump in 2022, growing 4.2% in US$ terms.
Wealth in Asia-Pacific has grown rapidly, but debt has spiraled upwards as well, while a few major markets saw their wealth contract, bucking the global trend.
It revealed that:-
- The top 1% of wealth holders own nearly 45-50% of global assets.
- Meanwhile, the bottom half of the world’s population collectively owns less than 2% of global wealth. This disparity is so vast that a billionaire’s daily earnings could exceed the lifetime earnings of millions of individuals in lower-income brackets.
Such a divergence in affluence further fuelled criticism of the so-called 1%, which has long been the standard rhetoric of the political Left.
It all started back in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street protesters called outgrowing economic inequality by proclaiming: “We are the 99%!”.
They demonized “the 1%" as fat cats who have grown even richer while the middle class has stagnated.
But you might be surprised to find this 1% doesn’t just comprise the super-rich.
It may include you, or people you know.
When you hear references to the 1%, you might think of billionaires such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Tesla founder Elon Musk.
According to Forbes's 2024 list of billionaires, there were 2,640 billionaires worldwide in 2024, averaging approximately 0.33 billionaires per million people.
This is a minuscule proportion of the 8.2 billion people on Earth.
So obviously, you don’t have to be a billionaire to join this global elite.
As of 2024, approximately 1.5% of the global adult population are millionaires.
Given the world population of about 8.2 billion people, this equates to roughly 58 million individuals possessing wealth exceeding $1 million
In fact 1.1% of the world’s adult population are millionaires.
It's noteworthy that the percentage of adults whose wealth exceeds $1 million has tripled since 2000, rising from 0.5% to 1.5%
Collectively, this group collectively hold approximately $208.3 trillion, accounting for 45.8% of global wealth
So how rich do you have to be to make it into the 1% club?
Well, look in the mirror because it’s very likely if you’re reading this you’re already in the 1%.
Australians wanting to be in the country’s top 1% for wealth need to have an individual net worth of US$5.5 million ($8.3 million), Knight Frank’s 2023 Wealth Report has found.
To be in the top 1% of wealth across Asia, the net worth required is even smaller – just US$3.5 million
- Also read:Brisbane’s property market forecast for 2025
- Also read:Melbourne property market forecast for 2025
- Also read:Latest property price forecasts for 2025 revealed. What’s ahead in our housing markets in the next year or two?
- Also read:Sydney property market forecast for 2025
- Also read:Property Predictions: The Dangerous Game You Shouldn’t Play!
There are even significant disparities within the 1%
The 1%, it turns out, have their own 1% – people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.
But when you look at mere mortals, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the average net worth of Australian households has seen significant growth over the past decades.
Here's a breakdown of the average net worth per household over the years:
| Year | Average Net Worth per Household |
|---|---|
| 2004 | $530,500 |
| 2014 | $858,600 |
| 2023 | $1,462,300 |
These figures illustrate a substantial increase in household net worth, with the average more than doubling from 2004 to 2023.
Digging deeper into the Australian Bureau of Statistics, income and wealth stats shows:
- Top 20% vs. Bottom 20% Earnings: The ABS reports that in 2019–20, the highest quintile of households received 47.8% of total household income, while the lowest quintile received 4.0%.
- Average Household Gross Income: In the same period, the average gross household income was $2,117 per week, equating to approximately $110,084 annually.
- Top 20% vs. Bottom 20% Wealth: The wealth disparity is more pronounced. In 2019–20, the wealthiest 20% of households held 63% of total household wealth, whereas the bottom 20% held just 1%.
And in Australia, it has a lot to do with property
Now clearly there is a wide gap between the top 1% and the average Australian and the fact is Australia’s richest households are expanding their wealth three times faster than the poorest groups, and many are using property to leverage their wealth.
Fact is, Australia’s wealth is heavily skewed towards property ownership.
It’s the investment vehicle that more average Australians use to develop their wealth than any other asset class.
Simply owning their own home over a period of 10 years or more has made money for an incredible number of people.
Over this period many homes doubled in value, which meant that many homeowners saw their household wealth increase substantially.
But another group discovered how to profit in ways other than just owning their own home.
They became real estate investors and bought additional properties.
They took their financial future into their own hands.
What’s the solution to this wealth inequality?
Sure, much attention and many headlines are devoted to the “unethical” wealth of these billionaires.
I believe rather than attacking the ultra-rich, we should focus less on taking actions that could inhibit top earners and we would be better off addressing the reasons others aren’t as successful and concentrating on how to improve the lives of those in the bottom 50 percent.
In this group, many workers are in desperate need of a skills upgrade and others need to learn financial fluency.
Many need to how to handle the money they earn including practicing delayed gratification and spend less than they earn so they can save and invest in their future.
One great lesson for them is that it is either having an easy life now and a hard life later; or doing the hard things now so they can have an easy life later.
Just to make things clear…before I receive a flood of negative comments- this blog isn’t to belittle the hardship many ordinary Australians have endured during the last year as mortgage costs, rents and the cost of living have skyrocketed.
Needless to say, I can understand why people would be upset when many of the top 1% are perceived to have earned their income unjustifiably.
Being paid by big corporations that in some cases have been run into the ground and then been bailed out by their governments doesn’t sound right.
Nor does a tax system where the wealthy seem to avoid tax and the poor seem to pay a disproportionate amount.
It’s hard to argue with that logic
I’m just offering another perspective and reminding you that even though our system has lots of faults, it has created more prosperity, even for the lowest 1%, than most of the world can comprehend, considering it was not that long ago that according to the UN, "Nearly half the world's population, 2.8 billion people, earn less than $2 a day" and the World Bank suggests that 95% of those living in the developing world earn less than $10 a day.
While it is very hard to develop wealth in many of the world's underdeveloped countries, which are rife with corruption and have poor education standards, in Australia, everyone has the opportunity to educate themselves, work hard and become financially fluent and join the ranks for the wealthy.
We are so lucky that we live in the best country in the world at the best time in history.
