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Inequality Datapoint Of The Day

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by Felix Salmon
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Oct 11 2007 12:00am EDT

Inequality Datapoint of the Day

From Shanghai-based data group The Hurun Rich List, via Marketwatch:

There are currently 106 mainland billionaires, up from 15 last year... The report added that China's 800 richest individuals have net wealth of $459.3 billion, equivalent to 16% of China's gross domestic product last year.

Wealth-to-GDP is a silly ratio, but one which refuses to go away: how often do we hear that "Bill Gates's wealth is greater than the GDP of [insert random country here]". A much more interesting ratio would be the net wealth of those 800 individuals as a percentage of the net wealth of China's population as a whole. More interesting still would be to look at China's Gini coefficient over the past few years, but the last National Human Development Report for China seems to have been published in 2005.

(HT: Kedrosky, who describes the report as "highly dubious"; I'm inclined to agree.)

Update: Forbes lists 40 Chinese billionaires. (Via Rodrik)

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