INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF WEALTH INEQUALITY

This study presents reasonably comparable estimates of the size distri bution of household or personal wealth for eight OECD countries-Austra lia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and t he United States. In the mid-1980s, the U.S. ranked as the most unequa l and Japan the least, while the other six countries had roughly compa rable levels of wealth inequality. Moreover, while wealth inequality r ose sharply in the U.S. during the 1980s, it increased modestly in Swe den and showed little change or a slight decline in Canada, France, an d the U.K. A comparison of time trends for the U.K. and the U.S. sugge sts that the relatively high wealth inequality in the U.S. in the 1980 s represents a marked turnaround from the 1950s, when the U.S. was con siderably more equal in terms of wealth ownership than the U.K. Compar ative results for the two countries hold for both conventional (market able) wealth and for augmented wealth, which includes a valuation of p ublic and private pension wealth.