Wealth Holdings in Developing and Transition Countries

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Wealth Holdings in Developing and Transition
Countries

• James Davies and Anthony Shorrocks
• January 2005

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Outline

• I. World Bank Data
• II. Survey Evidence
• III. Non-Survey Evidence
• IV. World Distribution of Wealth

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I. World Bank Data

• Aggregates only, 1994
• 92 countries
• - includes China, India, Indonesia, Brazil
• - excludes other transition countries
• Human Resources, Produced Assets, Natural Capital

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Table 1
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II. Survey Evidence China

• Rural Household Income Survey (RHIS) 1988, 1995,
  2002
• - McKinley (1992, 96), Brenner (2000)
• Urban Household Income Survey (UHIS) 1995, 2002
• - Gustafsson et al. (2001, 2004), Renwei
  Sai
• (2005)
• both by SSB for the Institute of Economics,
  Chinese
• Academy of Social Sciences

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China Major Features

• Response rate high
• Housing 45 of urban wealth
• Land 49 of rural wealth
• Financial assets important in urban areas

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China Major Features Contd.

• Debt very small
• Wealth inequality increasing
• - Rural Land ?
• - Urban Housing ?

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China Issues Problems

• Rural land value imputed from revenues
• Urban
• - floating population
• - land publicly owned
• - user rights in public housing
• - should over-sample upper tail
• National sample not fully representative

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Survey Evidence India

• All-India Debt and Investment Survey
• decennial since 1971
• latest available 1991
• collected by NSSO
• large sample size
• debt under-reported

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Survey Evidence Indonesia

• Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS)
• panel waves in 1993, 97, 02
• - conducted by RAND
• sample smaller than China or India
• detailed wealth results not published
• Data available via web

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III. Non-Survey Merrill Lynch

• estimates world no. and wealth of
• - US millionaires
• - persons worth gt 30 million
• methods not reported
• about 20 of millionaires are in DCs

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III. Non-Survey Forbes Billionaires

• World 587 billionaires in 2004
• 121 in DCs or transition countries
• 25 in Russia

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IV. World Distribution of Wealth

• Need
• country means (World Bank, OECD,)
• country shares of wealth groups
• - survey data for OECD, China, India
• - imputed for other countries
• Compare upper tails using Forbes list

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