Australia's median wealth has fallen nearly 7% since 2020, even as the country added more than 25,000 new millionaires last year, according to a new global wealth report from Swiss bank UBS. The report describes 2025 as “an extraordinary year” in which close to a million new millionaires were created worldwide, a record increase in a single year. However, the report warns that the “gains were uneven.”
Growing divide between rich and rest
“While average wealth rose notably, median wealth actually declined in most markets, highlighting a growing divide between the wealthiest and the broader population,” the UBS report states. The median provides a better insight into “typical” wealth levels at the middle of the scale, while the average can be distorted by a small group of very wealthy individuals.
In Australia, UBS calculated that average personal net wealth climbed by 19% so far this decade, even after accounting for high and persistent inflation between 2020 and 2025. But this masked a nearly 7% contraction in the median wealth of Australian adults over the same period, suggesting expanding wealth has favoured those at the top.
Global trends in median wealth
Australia is not alone. Through the past six years, median wealth is lower in 18 of the 29 countries analysed by UBS, including a roughly 20% decline in Germany, the US and the UK. In contrast, median wealth in the 2020s has jumped by 50% in Japan, 20% in India, and more than 10% in South Korea.
Independent economist Saul Eslake noted that “Australia hasn’t experienced as much widening in income inequality as quite a lot of other similar countries, but we have had big increases in wealth inequality.” He identified housing as the biggest driver of wealth inequality.
Property wealth and superannuation
Property wealth and compulsory superannuation helped Australian adults achieve the third-highest median net wealth in the world, at nearly US$211,000 (A$306,000), behind only Luxembourg and Belgium. While the US had the second-highest average level of wealth behind Switzerland, it ranked 28th of 30 countries by the median measure.
Eslake said it was “contested territory” whether high and rising inequality is technically bad for economies. However, he noted a growing consensus among major international bodies such as the IMF and the OECD that “beyond some point widening inequality detracts from economic growth.” He argued that wealthy people save more and thus do not add to growth, and that populist policies, often a reaction to widening inequality, are almost always bad for economic growth.
Tax system and inheritance tax
While Australia’s progressive income tax and transfer system helps flatten income inequality, Eslake argued “our tax system does very little at all to ameliorate the market forces driving increased inequality in the distribution of wealth.” This is one reason why he is among “a handful” of economists calling for an inheritance tax.
Eslake said the case for such a tax is particularly compelling given that “when you consider about $5.5tn dollars of wealth will be passed from boomers to their kids over the next 25-30 years, and most of those ‘kids’ will be in their 50s and 60s when they get it.” He added, “I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable that some of that is taxed on estates of $5m or $10m, with exemptions for surviving spouses or partners. If instead of stamp duty [on property transactions] we had a broadly based land tax, that would do some of it as well.”
