Global wealth surge last year
Credit Suisse released everyone's favourite document, the Global Wealth Report for 2021!
Global household wealth increased by a revised estimate of 8.6 per cent in 2020, although this was somewhat inflated by the US dollar.
In the end, 2021 also proved to be a bumper year for household wealth (using smoothed exchange rates):
The biggest gains in US dollar terms were seen in New Zealand, the US itself, and in Australia.
Of course, some of these gains are being unwound in 2022, and the US dollar has been immensely strong too.
Not a year goes by without the median wealth per adult figure causing a spate of online fury.
Variously it is argued that Australia's wealth is tied up in superannuation (true), housing (true), and that access to housing is restricted (true).
There's some truth in all of those points, of course, but contrary to most predictions from a decade ago, the median wealth per adult in Australia has ascended to sit at the top of the pile.
Australia's mean wealth per adult increased by US$66,350 to US$550,110, but we'll probably never top this table.
Switzerland, with its raft of multi-multi-billionaires, checks in at a mean wealth per adult of US$696,600.
Australia saw its number of USD millionaires increase by 390,000 to 2,177,000, but the number of ultra-high net worths (>US$50 million) ranked Australia as only the 8th highest country.
Holding on
It's worth noting that there has been a tremendous surge in the number of first homebuyers in Australia over the past couple of years, so the access to housing has been there to some degree, aided by first homebuyer concessions.
Credit Suisse noted Australia's "stellar performance" way back its 2011 Global Wealth Report, during the headiest of the resources boom years.
The tenor subsequently switched to "resilient" and then later "still resilient" over some of the years that followed.
It's likely that with the Aussie dollar down at around 65 US cents - and with stock markets and housing prices both down this year - the top spot might well not be held on to next year.
Still, the past decade has shown have even the end of the mining construction boom and the global financial crisis didn't bring the Aussie economic miracle unstuck.
Commodity prices are riding high, too, so if the RBA can navigate the next year successfully the future still looks pretty bright.
