Countries by Wealth per Capita

Yeah, Gotta 'Love' the Housing Boom... Ugh...

Depends when you bought in; although people in Perth may not agree now

Indeed it is mostly housing values. My house has doubled in value since I bought it.

Same. Lucky me.

Had them all but the top two...then I looked at the name of the source material. Still missed Iceland though.

Iceland was a surprise considering the massive drop of the ISK with the bank crisis in 2008. They value of the currency is still down from what it was, against the USD the value is about half of what it was. So either they were really rich or wtf? Also.. if I read that source material right (skimmed) the data for Switzerland is from 1997? Maybe I mistook that. That's a while ago too.

What about the Vatican, awful lot of money gets siphoned to that area.

I'm sure the only reason Canada is so high on the list is from housing expenses. A small house in Vancouver will go for CAD $1,000,000.

I wouldn't be surprised, honestly. I live just outside of Vancouver and I feel like I'm going to live with my parents forever :/ Either that or I'll live in an apartment with like 2-3 other people.

Several other cities have comparable (maybe worse) problems, for instance London or Barcelona.

I live in a smaller Canadian city and house prices are still ridiculous. I think I'll buy a tent instead!

There's a difference between expensive and unaffordable. In London and Barcelona wages are more commensurate with costs of living. Not so in a city like Vancouver, where some employers have difficulty finding and retaining staff since many workers can no longer afford to live there.

@redsplat: the facts do not support your thesis. The average wages in Canada are higher than in London or Barcelona (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage)

Now try a 3rd world country, where houses cost three times less... and people earn seven times less.

Go Italy!

Also, Switzerland... and this goes for many other countries on the list... I don't think a country really gets to claim it is "wealthy" so long as they're going to charge for ketchup at McDonald's. I would say that that is some ghetto-ass 3rd world bullcrap... but... they don't even try to pull that sh*t in the Philippines or Thailand or India or Ethiopia (and in Ethiopia it's not even a true McDonald's just a cheap knock-off)... so... I don't actually know what that is. But it's stingy and low.

I have a similar complaint about hiding taxes you have to pay when advertising stuff in the USA. As if they're optional ...

very interesting, 1:38 on the clock

Yes, while the mean for the US is $432K, the median is only $66K. Switzerland, on the other hand, has a much more even distribution of wealth, with a mean of $565K and a median of $228K.

Is there a similar quiz that uses median wealth?

Microstates are almost never present in these kinds of quizzes, because the data isn't avaliable.

According to the source, yes. San Marino clocks in at $218,321, just barely missing the cutoff for the quiz.

Actually, scratch that. It looks like $218,321 is just a dummy value they're using when they don't have good data. The exact same figure is given for Andorra, Liechtenstein, etc.

Compared to the rest of Europe, very few people in Germany own real estate. It's very common to just rent an apartment.

From the source: "Germany and Sweden remain below this level, probably reflecting generous state provision of pensions and healthcare, which reduces the incentive for individuals to save for their retirement needs." It should be added that employees have to directly transfer a significant part of their income to finance these security systems, instead of "sav[ing a significant part of their income] for their retirement needs". It is actually strange that these "state fonds" are not considered for the wealth calculation.

Andorra should be included in the caveat at the beginning. There's no data, but based on the housing prices and the number of inhabitants, I'm sure it would be in the list.

No I am wondering why China does not count

Because it is not amongst the 19 countries with the highest mean wealth per capita. Duh

Surprised Germany isn't here.

Me too. Germany is the fourth biggest economy in the world. But, I suppose that since the population is so high, it fizzles out when taken per capita. Remember that East Germany was a poor country until the 1990', as well.