European countries where there is greater inequality of wealth, how is Albania ranked?

Experts suggest that tax systems and home ownership rates play an important role in wealth disparities between the rich and the poor.

Wealth inequality is very visible around the world and Europe is no exception: the richest 10% on the continent own 67% of the wealth, while the bottom half owns only 1.2% of it.

The extent to which wealth is unevenly distributed also varies considerably from country to country, as shown by the Credit Suisse and UBS Global Wealth Report 2023.

Net worth, or "wealth", is defined as the value of financial assets plus real assets (mainly housing) owned by households, minus their debts.

Unequal distribution is measured by the Gini coefficient: the higher the Gini coefficient, the more wealth inequality there is, where 0 represents complete equality.

Among the 36 European countries studied, wealth inequality in 2022 ranged from 50.8 in Slovakia to 87.4 in Sweden.

Excluding Iceland, wealth inequality was quite high in all the Nordic countries. Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden were ranked in the top half of the table, with Sweden leading the list.

Germany had the highest wealth inequality score (77.2) among the EU's "big four" economies, followed by France (70.3), Spain (68.3) and Italy (67.8). The United Kingdom had a score of 70.2.

Belgium (59.6), Malta (60.9) and Slovenia (64.4) followed Slovakia with the lowest wealth inequality.

In Albania, wealth inequality is higher than in Montenegro, Italy and Greece, but lower than in Serbia. In our country, the Gini coefficient is 68.6.

Huge inequalities between the richest

Looking at the top ten richest in 2022, Sweden had the greatest wealth inequality, with 10% owning 74.4% of the wealth. Belgium had the lowest inequality value. with 43.5%.

In fact, the top 10 owned over half the wealth in every country except Belgium.

Among the EU's 'big four', Germany had the greatest wealth inequality, with the richest 10% owning 63% of the wealth, followed by France (54.9%), Spain (53.8%) and Italy (53.5 %). Great Britain had the lowest figure of all four countries at 53.3%.

Excluding Germany, the ten richest of Europe's four economic powers had relatively lower inequality figures among the 21 countries.

The ranking remains largely unchanged when comparing the wealthiest 5% to the top 10%. Sweden led the way, with the richest 5% owning 60.3% of the wealth, while Belgium had the lowest wealth inequality, with the top 5% owning 30.8% of the wealth.

Looking at the top 1%, Turkey had the highest figure at 39.5%, followed by the Czech Republic (37.8%), Sweden (35.8%) and Germany (30.%).

The top 1% in Belgium was well below the average, with the richest 1% owning only 13.5% of the wealth there. The next lowest figure was 19% in Portugal.

Why is Sweden at the top of wealth inequality?

It may come as a surprise to see the Nordic countries in general scoring so highly on wealth inequality, especially since they seem to perform very well on other indices, such as well-being, disposable income and democratic values.

The tax system is the most significant reason why Sweden in particular goes against it, according to Dr. Lisa Pelling, head of the Stockholm-based research institute Arena Idé.

"Over the past few decades, we've eliminated a number of wealth taxes," she said. "In Sweden, there is currently no wealth tax. There is also no inheritance, gift and estate tax.”

She said that successful international Swedish companies, which have benefited from investments made with taxpayers' money, are not returning those funds.

"We also have very low taxes for companies. This means that there are many opportunities for rich people to get even richer," added Pelling. / Euronews