The “2024 Global Wealth Pyramid” offers a precise and troubling depiction of how wealth is unevenly distributed in the contemporary world—an edifice with a broad base of poverty and a narrow apex of extreme capital concentration. According to these data, just 60 million adults—equivalent to 1.6% of the world’s adult population—control nearly 48–50% of total global wealth, a figure that on its own speaks to the profound class divide embedded in the global economic system.
At the top layer of the pyramid are individuals with assets exceeding $1mn. This small group controls around $226trn in wealth. Slightly below them is a tier with assets ranging from $100,000 to $1mn, comprising about 628 million people (16.4% of the adult population) and holding close to 39% of global wealth. Taken together, these two layers show that just 18% of the world’s wealthiest individuals own roughly 87% of global wealth.
By contrast, the middle and lower layers of the pyramid present a starkly different picture. Around 1.57bn people—more than 41% of the world’s adult population—fall within the $10,000 to $100,000 asset range, yet their share of total global wealth amounts to only about 12%. The situation at the base of the pyramid is even more critical: another 1.55bn people, or 40.7% of the adult population, live with assets below $10,000 and collectively hold just 0.6% of global wealth.
This unequal distribution is not merely a statistical issue; it reflects global economic, political and financial structures that systematically reproduce wealth in the hands of a minority while shifting risk and poverty onto the majority. The concentration of wealth at the top of the pyramid brings with it consequences such as reduced social mobility, the erosion of the middle class, economic instability and rising social and political tensions.
The 2024 Global Wealth Pyramid serves as a clear warning: without structural reforms to the global financial system, fairer tax policies and the strengthening of productive economies, the wealth gap will not only fail to narrow but will harden into a lasting crisis within the world’s economic order.
NOURNEWS