Household wealth in Singapore

business-times.asia1.com.sg :

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That's the stark but inescapable conclusion that leaps out of the latest socio-economic survey of Singapore households. A gain in household assets on the back of economic growth and rising equity prices, made for a 6.6% increase in net household wealth to $660 billion in 2005. This is the sum total of the value of the roof over one's head, cash savings, stock holdings, the CPF nest-egg, any other property or insurance investments, less the sum of all mortgage and personal loans and liabilities. It works out to net wealth of a comfortable $654,000 per household on average. But averages, of course, don't tell the full story.

On average, monthly household earnings rose to $5,400 in 2005, from $4,940 in 2000. But again, the devil is in the details. While all income groups enjoyed higher monthly earnings last year, over the five-year period between 2000 and 2005, the top 30% (with average household incomes between $7,260 and $16,480) had the biggest jump in income of 2-3%. The bottom 30% on the other hand, suffered an income decline of up to over 4%.

The problem of income inequality may have been evident for some years, but the latest indicators show that the gap has widened steadily every year between 2000-2005. Another way to look at it: the average per capita income of the top one-fifth of households has grown to 32 times that of the bottom fifth by 2005, up from 21 times five years earlier.

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