2024-01-08 16:30:05
The 10% of the richest Belgian households hold 55% of the country’s net wealth, according to the latest experimental statistics from the National Bank of Belgium (BNB) on the distribution of the net wealth of Belgian households, also called “distributional accounts of patrimony” (or Distributional Wealth Accounts). These figures were also revealed at the euro zone level by the European Central Bank (ECB).
The data thus show that the wealth held by the richest 10% represented 59% of Belgian wealth in 2011, to decrease to 55% in 2023, i.e. below the average in the euro zone. Over this same period, the share of wealth held by the least well-off half of Belgian households increased from 7 to 8.4%, while the average for the euro zone is 5%.
The Gini coefficient, used to account for the distribution of wealth within a population (the closer the coefficient is to 1, the more unequal the distribution), also shows an improvement: in Belgium it stood at 0, 68 in the second quarter of 2023 compared to 0.7 in 2018. This coefficient is 0.72 in the euro zone.
The BNB also shows that median household wealth is almost twice as high in Belgium as the euro zone average. This difference is explained by a more contained increase in prices on the real estate market, a high proportion of owners in Belgium and a less pronounced increase in Belgian stocks.
The objective of these “distributional wealth accounts”, now published every three months, is to bring together the data from the national sectoral accounts with those from the European Household Behavior Survey (HFCS), conducted every three years, to better understand the distribution of wealth according to households.
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