Wealth Disparity - 1% owns 99%

China has often been accused of having the worst income inequality in the world. However if data is analysed we come to a different conclusion...

China in 2008 has the fourth-largest number of millionaires in the world, overtaking Britain last year for the No. 4 spot and France the year before. Despite an 11.8% contraction in the number of China's high-net-worth individuals (from 413,000 in 2007 to 364,000) last year, in large part because Shanghai's stock market had such a rotten year, China's millionaires at the end of 2008 had combined wealth of $1.7 trillion—accounting for 23% of the region's assets controlled by the rich.

Although India's high-net-worth population shrank 31.6%, to 84,000—and its combined wealth declined 29%, to $310 billion—those figures could bounce back this year thanks to the stock market, up 75% this year. Indian millionaires tend to hold a very high percentage of their wealth in equities—about 32%, compared with 22% for the region as a whole.

The lion's share of wealth is still concentrated in Japan, however, where millionaires control $3.2 trillion, or 43% of the assets. Yet while the actual number of Japanese millionaires fell 9.9%, to 1.37 million, last year, there is still growing dissatisfaction over the widening gap between rich and poor. In the early 1970s, 61% of Japanese considered themselves to be middle class, a figure which has shrunk to 50% today, according to a government survey.

For America the income inequality, as you noted, is worse.