The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2013 found that the median wealth per Australian adult is US$219,500 – the highest in the world.
The finding is in line with the past three years and puts Australia ahead of the likes of Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Italy, the UK and Japan.
The average wealth per Australian adult is US$402,600, which is second only to Switzerland.
The report’s authors put the result down to the fact that Australians have more of their wealth invested in non-financial assets – primarily property – than the global average.
Australians have 58.5 per cent of their wealth in ‘real’ assets, compared to the world average of 45 per cent. Only Norway has a higher average level of real assets than Australia, according to Credit Suisse.
“In part, [this] reflects a sparsely populated country with a high endowment of land and natural resources, but it is also a manifestation of high property prices,” said the report.
US adult citizens only have 38 per cent of their wealth invested in non-financial assets, by comparison.
Household wealth in Australia grew by 2.6 per cent last year, compared to the world average of 4.6 per cent.
The average annual growth rate has been 13 per cent since 2000, but “about half of the rise is due to exchange rate appreciation”, according to the report.
“Using constant exchange rates, wealth has grown by just 3.3 per cent per annum since 2007,” said the Credit Suisse.
The report also found that Australia now has 1,123,000 US-dollar millionaires, up by 38,000 on the previous year.
The report’s authors also noted that Australia has one of the developed world’s best Gini coefficients (which measures the income distribution of a country’s residents).
