Credit Suisse Wealth Report 2016: Average wealth per adult rose 1.4 per cent to US$276,885 (S$394,000)

The annual Credit Suisse report is out for 2016. Some data that are of more interest to Singapore are as follows:

2016 Average wealth of a Singaporean: US$276,885 (S$394,000) 
The report also broke down this value to:
Financial wealth per adult: US$180,414
Non-financial wealth per adult: US$151,239 
Debt per adult: US$54,768

2015 data for reference: 
Average wealth: US$273,085
Financial wealth per adult: US$176,978
Non-financial wealth per adult: US$150,145 
Debt per adult: US$54,039

Non-Financial wealth comprises of mainly housing and land owned.

My comments: 
The average income has rose by 1.39 % from 2015 to 2016.
A large part of the average wealth actually comes from the property (in Singapore's case, it should be the HDB for most people)


2016 Median wealth of a Singaporean: US$101,386 (S$143,600)


2015 data for reference: 
Median US$104,094

My comments:
Even though average income has rose by 1.39%, median income has fell by 2.60%!!
It seems that gap between the rich and poor have yet widen again. But how is the wealth distribution now? Digging further into the report, I found this: 

Wealth distribution:  

Country	Adults (thousands)	Mean wealth of adult (USD)	Median wealth of adult (USD)	Distribution of adults (%) by wealth range (USD)
				under 10,000	10,000 - 100,000	100,000 – 1 million	over 1 million
Singapore	4,111	276,885	101,386	17.6	32.2	46.5	3.7

My comments:
46.5% of Singaporeans fall under the 100k to 1M (USD) wealth range. The median income (101k USD) is slightly higher than the lower value of this range. With a 49.8% whose wealth is below 100k USD, the numbers here make sense
A large portion (17.6%) of Singaporeans have a wealth of less than 10k

Also, I feel it would be meaningful if we can view the age breakdown for each band of wealth range. The data above do not show how long the individuals has been accumulating the wealth they are holding. But for median wealth to drop by 2.60%, it is somewhat disturbing.


Sources:
http://publications.credit-suisse.com/index.cfm/publikationen-shop/research-institute/

http://www.todayonline.com/business/singaporeans-average-wealth-increases-us277000-credit-suisse-report

Average wealth in Singapore up 6.8% to $351,998: Credit Suisse

In a news article today, it was reported that the average wealth per adult has increased by 6.8% over the past year to US$282,000 (S$351,998). The report defines wealth as the value of financial assets plus real assets - mainly real estate - minus household debt.

see article:
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/money/story/average-wealth-singapore-68-351998-credit-suisse-20131009

Of course, "average wealth" is meaningless in a country with a high Gini coefficient. Singapore's gini coefficient stands at 0.478 in 2012. The gini coefficient is a measure of "income inequality" in a country. The coefficient is a number between 0 and 1 where 0 correspond to perfect equality and 1 correspond to perfect inequality.

I was more interested in the MEDIAN wealth and tried to dig further for more info. The report provided a nice little summary for each county. The summary for Singapore is as follows:

The median Singapore wealth is US$90,466. This works out to $112,921. The median data is much more useful. At the very least, we now know that 50% of the Singapore population has a net worth of more than $112,921. It brings a second question: How much increase was it from the previous year?

A further search for last year (2012) 's data shows the following:

The median Singapore wealth in 2012 was US$95,542. The median wealth is 5.31% lower this year!

Recalling that the average wealth has increased by 6.8%, we can see that the gap between the rich and poor has yet again widen. Comparing the 2 year's data, we also see that the number of millionaires has increased from 156000 to 174000. The percentage of global wealth holders has also increased. 

Other thoughts

I feel that the article is very misleading. The article tried to paint a picture where Singaporeans has increased in wealth over the past year. But in reality, even though the average wealth has increased, the median wealth has dropped by 5.3%. The article should have provided the median wealth information as well to provide a more complete picture.