Average versus median wealth — where the gap is largest
In most rich countries the average adult has two to three times the net worth of the median adult. In some countries the gap is far larger. What the difference tells you.
Headlines about national wealth usually quote the average (mean) net worth per adult: total household wealth divided by the number of adults. But a handful of very rich people pull the average up. The median — the adult in the exact middle — tells you more about a typical person.
The ratio between the two is a simple, intuitive measure of how concentrated wealth is.
The richest typical adults
These are the countries with the highest median net worth per adult in the WealthPercentile model (US dollars at ECB exchange rates of 2026-10-09):
| Country | Median adult | Average adult |
|---|---|---|
| Switzerland | $254,000 | $888,000 |
| Luxembourg | $229,000 | $533,000 |
| Australia | $214,000 | $570,000 |
| Netherlands | $203,000 | $426,000 |
| Canada | $193,000 | $377,000 |
| Belgium | $181,000 | $387,000 |
| Iceland | $176,000 | $755,000 |
| Singapore | $175,000 | $508,000 |
| Norway | $155,000 | $315,000 |
| New Zealand | $146,000 | $379,000 |
Several small, rich economies lead. A high median usually goes with widespread home ownership and large funded pension savings.
Where average and median are closest — and furthest apart
| Country | Average ÷ median | Median adult (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Slovakia | 1.8× | $60,800 |
| Canada | 2.0× | $193,000 |
| Malta | 2.0× | $87,000 |
| Norway | 2.0× | $155,000 |
| Netherlands | 2.1× | $203,000 |
| Belgium | 2.1× | $181,000 |
| … | ||
| Uruguay | 4.8× | $23,500 |
| Russia | 4.8× | $15,900 |
| United States | 6.3× | $93,600 |
| South Korea | 6.9× | $34,900 |
| Sweden | 7.0× | $53,700 |
| South Africa | 11.9× | $2,510 |
At the top of the table, the average adult has roughly twice the net worth of the median adult. At the bottom, the average is many times the median: a large share of wealth sits with a small group at the top, while many adults have little or even negative net worth after debt.
Reading the gap with care
- Debt matters. Countries where many people hold large mortgages or student loans relative to their assets can have low medians even when average wealth is high. This is part of the story in Sweden, where household debt is high and a large part of retirement savings sits in the public pension system, which is not counted as personal wealth.
- Pensions are not counted equally. Funded pension savings count as wealth; promises from public pension systems do not. Two countries with similar living standards can therefore look very different.
- These are model estimates. The country curves come from the World Inequality Database’s generalized percentiles, which combine surveys, tax data and national accounts. Data quality varies by country — see each country page for its score.
Explore
Every country page shows the median, the average and the top-1% threshold for net worth and income, for example Germany, Sweden and the United States. Or check your own rank.