At the turn of the twentieth century, the wealthiest one percent of people in the United Kingdom controlled 71 percent of net personal wealth, while the top ten percent controlled 93 percent. The share of wealth controlled by the rich in the United Kingdom fell throughout the twentieth century, and by 1990 the richest one percent controlled 16 percent of wealth, and the richest ten percent just over half of it.

The overall wealth of households in the United Kingdom was 13.5 trillion British pounds in the period between 2020 and 2022. Of this overall wealth, the top ten percent of households had over 5.5 trillion pounds of wealth, compared with 13.9 billion owned by the lowest wealth decile.

Individual-level estimates of total wealth (July 2010 to March 2020) and regression estimates for the latest survey period.

This statistic presents the wealth distribution among households in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018. Approximately 44.6 percent adults in the United Kingdom found themselves in the bracket of between 100 thousand and one million U.S. dollars as their household private wealth.

The values of any financial assets held including both formal investments, such as bank or building society current or saving accounts, investment vehicles such as Individual Savings Accounts, endowments, stocks and shares, and informal savings.

The value of any pension pots already accrued that are not state basic retirement or state earning related. This includes occupational pensions, personal pensions, retained rights in previous pensions and pensions in payment.

An average of 79% of Bangladeshi households were in the 2 lowest income quintiles (after housing costs were deducted) between April 2019 and March 2022

In the 2022/23 financial year, various measures of inequality in the United Kingdom decreased when compared with 2021/22. The S80/20 ratio fell from 6.3 to 5.5, the P90/10 ratio from 4.5 to 4.2, and the Palma ratio between 1.5 and 1.3.

As of 2025, the GDP per capita or gross domestic product per person was almost 54,280 U.S. dollars per person. The GDP per capita is derived from the country's total GDP divided by the population. The average or mean wealth per person in the United Kingdom (UK) was higher than the median or middle value of wealth per person living in the UK.

The Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) is a longitudinal survey, which aims to address gaps identified in data about the economic well-being of households by gathering information on level of assets, savings and debt; saving for retirement; how wealth is distributed among households or individuals; and factors that affect financial planning. Private households in Great Britain were sampled for the survey (meaning that people in residential institutions, such as retirement homes, nursing homes, prisons, barracks or university halls of residence, and also homeless people were not included).

The WAS commenced in July 2006, with a first wave of interviews carried out over two years, to June 2008. Interviews were achieved with 30,595 households at Wave 1. Those households were approached again for a Wave 2 interview between July 2008 and June 2010, and 20,170 households took part. Wave 3 covered July 2010 - June 2012, Wave 4 covered July 2012 - June 2014 and Wave 5 covered July 2014 - June 2016. Revisions to previous waves' data mean that small differences may occur between originally published estimates and estimates from the datasets held by the UK Data Service. These revisions are due to improvements in the imputation methodology.

Note from the WAS team - November 2023:
"The Office for National Statistics has identified a very small number of outlier cases present in the seventh round of the Wealth and Assets Survey covering the period April 2018 to March 2020. Our current approach is to treat cases where we have reasonable evidence to suggest the values provided for specific variables are outliers. This approach did not occur for two individuals for several variables involved in the estimation of their pension wealth. While we estimate any impacts are very small overall and median pension wealth and median total wealth estimates are unaffected, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of the pension wealth within the wealthiest decile, and data derived from them. We are urging caution in the interpretation of more detailed estimates."

Survey Periodicity - "Waves" to "Rounds"
Due to the survey periodicity moving from "Waves" (July, ending in June two years later) to “Rounds” (April, ending in March two years later), interviews using the ‘Wave 6’ questionnaire started in July 2016 and were conducted for 21 months, finishing in March 2018. Data for round 6 covers the period April 2016 to March 2018. This comprises of the last three months of Wave 5 (April to June 2016) and 21 months of Wave 6 (July 2016 to March 2018). Round 5 and Round 6 datasets are based on a mixture of original wave-based datasets. Each wave of the survey has a unique questionnaire and therefore each of these round-based datasets are based on two questionnaires. While there may be some changes in the questionnaires, the derived variables for the key wealth estimates have not changed over this period. The aim is to collect the same data, though in some cases the exact questions asked may differ slightly. Detailed information on Moving the Wealth and Assets Survey onto a financial years’ basis was published on the ONS website in July 2019.

Further information and documentation may be found on the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey webpage. Users are advised to the check the page for updates before commencing analysis.

Users should note that issues with linking have been reported and the WAS team are currently investigating.

Secure Access WAS data
The Secure Access version of the WAS includes additional, detailed geographical variables not included in the End User Licence (EUL) version (SN 7215). These include:

• Wards
• Parliamentary Constituency Areas for Wave 1 only
• Census Output Areas
• Lower Layer Super Output Areas
• Local Authorities
  
• Local Education Authorities

Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the WAS will need to fulfil additional requirements, including completion of face-to-face training, and agreement to the Secure Access User Agreement and Licence Compliance Policy, in order to obtain permission to use that version (see 'Access' section below). Users are therefore strongly encouraged to download the EUL version (SN 7215) to see if it contains sufficient detail for their needs, before considering making an application for the Secure Access version.

Latest Edition Information
For the ninth edition (October 2022), the Round 7 person and household data have been updated. The Round 7 Wave 1 Variable Catalogue Excel file has also been updated.

These data explore changes in English and American consumption between 1550 and 1800. The probate inventories (Parts 1-11) include information about personal wealth, household production, and the possession of consumer durables and semi-durables. The household survey for England circa 1790 (Part 12) contains dietary information as well as information about other household expenditures. The wills from England and America (Part 13) are a source for learning about the kinds of goods people obtained from their families through inheritance. Finally, information pertaining to the distribution network in eighteenth century England is contained in the aggregate county-level data on the shop and peddler's tax (Part 13).

This statistic shows the numbers of offices of large wealth management companies distributed regionally in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2013 and 2016. Wealth management is a broad category of financial services, which includes management of HNWI (high-net-worth-individual) client's assets and optimization of investment portfolio, according to client's financial goals and objectives. As of 2013, 117 offices of private wealth management firms were located in London. By 2016, that number grew to 143 offices. Second in the ranking was South East region, with 77 offices in 2013 and 94 in 2016.

Many of Europe's largest economies have seen falling shares of their national wealth taken by the bottom 50 percent of the wealth distribution since the 1990s. Italy in particular stands out as a particularly stark case, as the bottom half owned around 10 percent of the wealth in the country in 1995, while in 2021 they owned only 2.5 percent. Russia is the other country which has seen a consistent decline in the wealth of its poorest 50 percent, with the economic crises of the 1990s causing the poor to rapidly lose their share of wealth, but without any recovery during the years of economic success in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom have seen more moderate decreases in the bottom 50 percent share, with Spain and the UK in fact showing increases in their shares during the early 2000s, as their respective housing booms inflated the wealth of the poorest, before retracting during the financial crisis and great recession. Turkey stands out as an outlier among the large European economies, as the share taken by its bottom half has more than tripled since the 1990s, now having a higher share than in Russia and Italy. This period in Turkey has been marked by rapid economic growth, modernization, and urbanization, some of which has benefitted the poorest by providing new economic opportunities.

This statistic presents the outcome of prosperity index research conducted by Barclay for the regions of the United Kingdom (UK) as of August 2015. According to the research incorporating various factors into the prosperity score, the most prosperous region of the UK was the city of London, with a score of 0.81 points. South East and Eastern England followed with 0.61 and 0.47 score, respectively. Least prosperous was North East, with 0.21 index points on the scale.

This statistic shows the projection of direct staff (full-time equivalent) in the private banking and wealth management sector in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2016, by region. The projection is based on data collected for the first, second and third quarter of 2016. Wealth management is a broad category of financial services, which includes management of client's assets, and optimization of investment portfolio, according to client's financial goals and objectives. Private banking provides services that might not include investments. It typically centers around high-net-worth-individuals (HNWIs) financial needs, offering personalized care of clients' finances, either by public or private financial institution. In 2016, approximately 16.1 thousand staff was projected to be working in London in private banking and wealth management services.

As of 2021, the countries in Europe with the greatest share of national wealth taken by the top 10 percent of wealthy people were Russia, Turkey, and Hungary, with over two-thirds of wealth in Russia being owned by the wealthiest decile. On the other hand, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Denmark were the countries with the smallest share of national wealth going to the top 10 percent, with more than half of wealth in the Netherlands going to the bottom 90 percent. Ireland, Poland, and Greece stand out, as in these countries the 50 percent of people who own the least wealth in fact have negative net wealth, meaning that the value of their debt is greater than the value of their gross wealth.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This project has sought to recover and analyse new data relating to the distribution of wealth and the language of social description in England between c.1550 and c.1750. A database has been compiled of 13,686 responses of witnesses in the church courts to the commonly asked question of what they were worth with their debts paid. Witnesses responses to the question of their worth often included monetary estimates of material worth, alongside details about how they made a living, together with more qualitative forms of evaluation in ethical terms of honesty and industriousness. This data will underpin analysis of the distribution of wealth and poverty by socio/occupational status, age and gender amongst a broad social range of witnesses during a period of profound economic and social change. Particular attention will be given to the nature and pace of economic change; to the relationship between wealth, status and the life-cycle; to the impact of social polarisation deemed characteristic of the periods history; and to the degree to which an incipient labouring class can be discerned. In addition, the terms in which witnesses described their own (and sometimes each others) worth will be explored in order to chart popular concepts of wealth and poverty, perceptions of social difference, and forms of self-esteem that were often far removed from formal classificatory schemes of the early modern social order. Finally, the wider cultural significance of monetary markers of wealth will be probed in order to situate commonly cited values (such as forty shillings and 10) within qualitative as well as quantitative frames of reference. The data also contains extensive information about the literacy status and migration histories of witnesses, and incidental details of their religious observance.
Main Topics:

A dataset has been compiled by extracting data from series of depositions taken within a range of jurisdictions adopting a civil law procedure between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. It comprises 13,686 statements of worth, provided by 13,012 witnesses, along with related (and often extensive) biographical material. Worth statements were required of most witnesses appearing in many such jurisdictions between the 1550s and 1640s, and of smaller proportions of witnesses thereafter. They were given in response to an interrogatory designed to evaluate witness credibility that asked witnesses for an account of their worth in goods with all debts paid. Data has been selected from the dioceses of Ely, Canterbury, Chester, Chichester (mostly covering the Archdeaconry of Lewes), London, Salisbury and York, and from the Cambridge University Courts. Constructed as a flat file Microsoft Access database, information relating to 48 variables has been entered in conjunction with each worth statement given by a witness. These variables include details of the jurisdiction, repository, and full MS reference numbers for each worth statement; the cause type and names of the litigants; the number of interrogatories posed to each witness and the place of the worth question within them; the date of the witness appearance; and details of any expenses received or expected to cover the cost of that appearance. Each witness response to the question of his/her worth has been transcribed in full, along with the following biographical details: age, gender, marital status, title/addition, office, occupation, parish and county of residence, migration history, place of birth, literacy status (whether the deposition was verified by a witness signature or a mark), and any further incidental biographical details relating to work, wages, credit relations, landholding, rental and tenancy agreements, rate and tax paying status, dependence on charity or formal parish relief, or religious observance.

This statistic shows the distribution of investment assets of large wealth management firms in the United Kingdom (UK) for 2016, listed by ownership status. Wealth management is a broad category of financial services, which includes management of client's assets, and optimization of investment portfolio, according to client's financial goals and objectives. Private banking provides services that might not include investments. It typically centers around high-net-worth-individuals (HNWIs) financial needs, offering personalized care of clients' finances, either by public or private financial institution. According to the data, client holding assets amounted to 524 billion British pounds in value and constituted the largest pool of wealth managers assets under management. Assets held in ISAs were second in value in the ranking, coming up to 146 billion British pounds.

This statistic shows the distribution of weekly amounts of children pocket money in the United Kingdom in 2015. The majority of parents gave between five and fifteen British pounds as weekly pocket money fund. One percent of parents surveyed gave less than one British pound. Four percent gave more than 30 British pounds as a weekly kid's allowance.