The Global Wealth Report 2025 by UBS

Massive changes in the past half-decade to quarter-century incl. drastic wealth growth (nearly) world-wide, which indicates that whatever differences™ there are, they are manufactured

Enjoy the ride ^-*. Emphases mine, as is the [snark].

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Global Wealth Report: Where in Europe did people's net worth increase the most?

By Servet Yanatma, Euronews, 27 July 2025 [source; archived]

According to a new report by multinational investment bank UBS…wealth per adult increased in a huge majority of European countries between 2023 and 2024, while a few saw declines, according to UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2025.

Changes measured in local currencies are shown in both average and median values—we focus on the median for deeper analysis, which isn’t affected by extreme outliers, while briefly mentioning averages.

Hungary recorded the highest real growth in median wealth per adult between 2023 and 2024, rising by 18.6%. The growth also reached 15% or above in several other countries, including Lithuania (16.9%), Sweden (15.3%), Italy and Latvia (both 15%).

In the report, among EU member states, candidate countries, EFTA members, and the UK, only Turkey [sic; it should be Türkiye] and Belgium saw a decline in median wealth per adult. Turkey stands out with a sharp 20.9% drop, while Belgium recorded a more moderate fall of 5.6%.

Of Europe’s five largest economies, Italy saw the highest real growth in wealth per adult at 15% whereas the UK had the lowest at 5.3%. France (10.3%), Germany (9.5%), and Spain (9%) fell in between.

Switzerland, the wealthiest country per adult, saw a 7.7% increase. Sweden and other Nordic countries also recorded strong growth, each exceeding 10%.

Outside Europe, South Korea (13.9%), Australia (10.7%), Canada (9.6%), and Japan (8.6%) saw significant gains in 2024. The increase in the US was more moderate at 2.3%. China and Russia recorded notable declines of 6.3% and 8.2%, respectively.

Looking at average wealth change instead of median, several European countries saw declines. Both Turkey (–14.6%) and Belgium (–0.3%) saw smaller average declines in comparison to their median values. Luxembourg (-1.3%), Estonia (–2.3%), France (–1.8%), and the UK (–3.6%) also recorded decreases…

Five-Year Changes: Austria Records the Largest Decline

‘Real’ changes in wealth per adult from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2024 reveal longer-term trends. Austria emerges as a major outlier, with median wealth per adult falling by 18% [that would be the consequences of Covidistan’s Pandemic™ responses]. The Netherlands (–2.3%) and Estonia (-0.1%) followed.

In Europe, Cyprus recorded the highest increase at 43.9%, followed by Denmark, Latvia, and Lithuania—each with gains of over 30%.

Real median wealth per adult growth also exceeded 25% in Malta, Slovenia, Norway, Bulgaria, and Portugal [living in Norway, I call BS on that one: high taxes, low wage growth, and high interest rates are doing their thing in conjunction with a very, very weak currency vs. leading other currencies, notably the US$ and the Euro].

Germany saw the highest rise among Europe’s top five economies, with a 20.1% increase. Italy recorded the lowest at 4.7%. Spain (17.8%) and the UK (16.3%) posted strong growth, while France saw a more moderate increase of 10.5%.

Major non-European countries reported significant growth, with the US leading at 45.8%, followed by Russia (35.1%) and South Korea (31%).

In average terms, the picture changes completely. Several countries saw declines in wealth per adult. Cyprus, which recorded the highest growth in median wealth, emerged as the outlier with a -24.9% drop in average wealth per adult.

Other significant drops occurred in Austria (–13.1%), Malta (–11.3%), Estonia (-10.6%), Italy (-9.4%), and Ireland (-7.8%). Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, and Slovakia also recorded comparatively moderate declines.

The Impact of High Inflation

“The contraction in real average wealth per adult in this period was mainly due to high inflation in the concerned countries, particularly so in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, but also in Italy, albeit to a slightly lesser extent”, the report noted.

The growth in the size of the adult population was a further contributing factor [that would be mass immigration to blame—in the case of Austria, w/o mass immigration, the population would have shrunk for decades], primarily in the Netherlands and, to a smaller degree, in Switzerland according to the report. In Switzerland’s case, currency depreciation was the primary factor, followed by inflation.

What do Divergences Suggest?

Divergences are striking in several countries, where changes in average and median wealth per adult differ significantly. For example, in Switzerland, slightly negative growth in average wealth per adult compares with a 14% rise in median wealth per adult, while in Italy the figures are respectively –10% and almost +5%.

“These divergences suggest slower wealth growth at the higher end of the spectrum than in the middle section of the wealth distribution,” the report pointed out.

The same dynamic was at work in Germany and the UK, too.

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From UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2025

What this kind of reporting™ does, is this: it’s highly, highly selective what it takes from the report. Here’s a sampling of stuff that is important but remains outside the remit of the above piece:

The United States and mainland China are jointly home to over half of the personal wealth present in our sample of markets. The other 54 share the remaining 46% [p. 14]

And then there’s this snippet on p. 15:

In real terms, in local currency, almost one third of the markets in our sample had lower average wealth per adult at the beginning of 2025 than at the beginning of 2020. These include Switzerland, India, Italy, Qatar, the Netherlands and Mexico.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the past five years have brought about a 44% increase in average wealth per adult in South Korea, a 41% increase in Norway, a 35% increase in Taiwan and a 27% increase in mainland China, closely followed by Russia, Singapore and Brazil, all between 23% and 26.5%. The United States stand at just over 9%, the United Kingdom at over 6.5% [hear the rumbling? It’s the centre of gravity in the world economy shifting rapidly].

The contraction in real average wealth per adult in this period was mainly due to high inflation in the concerned countries, particularly so in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, but also in Italy, albeit to a slightly lesser extent.

Here’s a graph to illustrate the summarised developments from p. 16:

Austria—rather: Covidistan—is on the far-right side of the graph, with massive drops in both average and median wealth.

What does this mean? Here’s the ‘splanation’ from p. 18:

Similarly to what we found in last year’s report for the period since 2008, Western Europe is a mosaic of wealth growth, not a unit [also, not a country, thankfully]: the inflation-adjusted rise in average wealth over the past five years varies widely, even between countries sharing the same currency.

The top 25 ranking by average and median wealth does not materially differ from last year. Yet, it allows for some interesting conclusions. First of all, average wealth per adult consistently outstrips median wealth per adult, across our entire sample, and significantly so, often even by a factor of two. Secondly, the ranking of median wealth tends to be the one that causes more surprise. Indeed, there are a few quietly well-off places in the top ten that fly below the radar of public attention but that rank highly in terms of median wealth per adult in spite of less than spectacular average wealth.

Here’s the accompanying listing:

What About Wealth Distribution?

Well, I’ll leave out pp. 19-30 (which all deal with millionaires and billionaires), and here’s from changes since 2000 in terms of wealth growth worldwide:

Indeed, since the start of the millennium, there has been a marked and consistent increase in wealth all around the world.

This is the case for the world as a whole as much as it is for each of its main regions. For a start, the only wealth bracket that has been hemorrhaging members since the year 2000 is the lowest one that goes from zero to USD 10,000. All others have been expanding, with the bracket between USD 100,000 and one million being the fastest-growing. The second-lowest wealth band has overtaken the lowest in number of individuals in every main region bar the Americas, where it is, however, close to doing so [pp. 31-2].

This is accompanied by the following graph:

What is amazing is this—25 years ago, 3 out of 4 people world-wide made/had less than 10K US$ annually; that number now is about half that size. At the same time, since the share of millionaires more than tripled over this time period, the other two—shall we call them ‘middle-class’?—brackets also rose significantly. What’s perhaps even more important is this (p. 32):

These developments hold true even after adjusting for inflation, i.e. in real USD terms. Overall, since the beginning of the millennium, total personal wealth net of debt and net of inflation has been rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4%.

This decade, the wealth band below USD 10,000 has ceased to be the most populated one in our sample, having been overtaken by the next-higher band between USD 10,000 and 100,000.

So, there you have it.

Bottom Lines

Say what you will about Global Capitalism™ (which, in rather true fashion, cannot be defined), but whatever the system’s name, it produces rather staggeringly positive effects despite all its shortcomings.

Part of the issue appears to be—how to transmogrify these trends and developments into geopolitical action, and this is where the rubber meets the road, figuratively speaking: there’s very little, indeed, that suggests any kind of régime change as the go-to answer in light of the benefits accruing at the very top of the wealth distribution.

Yet, the world is hovering with excitement, and that’s not necessarily a good thing; I do acknowledge the fact that there’s no constant salience to any body politic over time, but what’s striking to me is that the absence of major crises (like a world war, or massive price hikes for oil) during the past quarter-century shows, once again, that commerce is better than war (doh), and not merely for the global élites but also for sizeable shares of the world’s population at-large.

That makes the seemingly inexorable drive to war, the brinksmanship it entails, and the near-constant saber-rattling a strange and, above all, supremely irrational feature of the present moment.

My personal take is that this heightening of tensions may be due to two main reasons:

• the distribution of wealth (and thus influence) between the US and China is rapidly shifting, thus preparing a quite obvious background for increased tensions

• at the same time, ideology or other believes are no substitute for reality, and my main concern here is that the former are so widely distributed now that it will be highly embarrassing to pull back too far too fast

In the end, this situation will need to be deflated/re-adjusted, and I truly expect things that can’t go on forever to stop or reverse, incl. the current manias around (public) health™, mass immigration, and the seemingly inexorable march of folly towards war.¹

One way or another, given the massive dislocations and distortions in the economy at-large over the same timeframe (i.e., since the 1990s), something will give bigly, and since we’re already experiencing stagnating real wage growth across most of the advanced economies, a debt crisis appears inevitable.

Technically, there’s probably enough wealth around to serve as a buffer, yet the main issue is: who’s going to eat the losses? Major western countries don’t seem to be able, politically speaking, to do much heavy lifting—absent war (which restricts consumption and is likely accompanied by mandated investments™ into war bonds or the like).

Thus, even if war doesn’t promise economic benefits, it would provide the next-to-ideal cover story for the next bout of statism into the economy at-large. Incidentally (/sarcasm), that’s also what’s going to benefit the ‘primary dealers’ of Global Capitalism™ who will, likely, seek to buy off the world’s peoples with more promises of personal gain, however absurd arrived-at (e.g., CDBCs, massive infringements on civil liberties, etc.)

Whatever the exact outcome, I think it’s save to predict that the coming years will be an even wilder ride than the most recent past.

1. I’ll set aside the asinine reporting™ done by Euronews, for they quite literally picked quotes (without attributing them explicitly) to the UBS report, kinda jumped over the meaty parts, and spun this in the least informative way.

In the end, I fully expect really-existing journalism™ to go away, albeit not in the sense of there being no more legacy media outlets; I do expect more people realise it’s mainly GIGO (garbage in-garbage out), which indicates that more and more relevant content—such as UBS’ report—will be hidden from John Q. Public behind paywalls or the like.