Global Wealth Growth Has Cooled

Global wealth growth has slowed in the past decade compared to the one before, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, published today. Where the average annual growth was 7 percent between 2000 and 2010, it cooled to just over 4.5 percent between 2010 and 2023.

As the following chart shows, wealth growth is far from uniform. In Mainland China and India, average annual wealth development has more than halved since 2010. It’s a similar story in Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Australia, where annual wealth growth has dropped by over two-thirds.

While none of the 56 markets analyzed by UBS experienced negative growth in average annual wealth between 2000-2010, four markets did during the second decade - Greece, Japan, Italy and Spain. According to the report, the demographic changes of shrinking populations and aging societies likely played a role in reducing the level of economic activity in cases such as Japan and Italy.