Taipei, April 29 (CNA) The difference in net wealth between the wealthiest and least wealthy 20 percent of households has risen four-fold over the past 30 years, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported Monday.
In its first report on the distribution of household wealth in Taiwan since 1991, the DGBAS said the wealthiest 20 percent of households in Taiwan held 66.9 times more wealth than the bottom 20 percent as of the end of 2021, up four-fold from 16.8 times in 1991.
At the same time, the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, had increased from 0.47 to 0.606.
The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 representing an economy with perfect wealth equality, and 1 signifying maximal uneven distribution.
Average household wealth as of the end of 2021 was NT$16.38 million (US$502,467), while median household wealth was NT$8.94 million, another indication of inequality as the wealthiest households pulled average wealth well above the median value.
Defining net wealth as the value of assets such as property, vehicles, stocks and other financial assets minus debt, the DGBAS said it had not released a similar report since 1991 because data was difficult to come by due to the need for personal information.
It made use of the responses obtained for the Report on the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure and combined that with big data on assets and debts to obtain the results released on Monday.
DGBAS Census Department head Pan Ning-hsin (潘寧馨) advised against comparing the results today to those from 30 years ago, as the methodologies differed greatly, with the 1991 results relying on a survey while those for 2021 relied on big data.
Still, Pan said the widening gap in wealth disparity was inevitable in free economies and indicated that Taiwan’s wealth inequality was less severe than in many other countries.
Taiwan’s Gini coefficient of 0.606 was still lower than that of Australia (0.611), Great Britain (0.62), Japan (0.678), France (0.676) and Germany (0.727).
As for the wealth gap between the top and bottom 20 percent, Taiwan’s 66.9 was also lower than Australia’s 93.1, Great Britain’s 109.5, South Korea’s 140.1 and France’s 627.4.
The same report also estimated gross national wealth at NT$310.61 trillion at the end of 2022, up 9.2 percent from the end of 2021. Net national wealth was NT$247.14 trillion, up 9.63 percent from 2021.
Pan said that despite the difficulties of finding accurate data, the DGBAS will do its best to generate a similar report in another 10 years.
(By Pan Tzu-yu and Wu Kuan-hsien)
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