Australia’s wealth grows 7% since COVID

Oksana Patron

4 July 2023

Despite rampant inflation and growing cost-of-living pressures, Australia’s wealth increased 7% between March, 2020, and March, 2023, helped by the soaring value of owner-occupied homes that grew 43.2% up to $5.95 trillion, according to the Roy Morgan Wealth Report 2023.

Although this period saw the value of debt having grown more quickly than the value of assets (53.0% vs. 22.2%), it was not enough to stop the overall increase in wealth, with half of the population now accounting for 95.4% of the nation’s net wealth, the study said.

However, the report found, that while the wealth of the richest in the nation, which accounted for only 10% of the population, fell from 47.6% to 42.1%, the share of wealth held by the next wealthiest 40% increased the most, from 48.9% to 53.3%.

At the same time, the poorest half of the population, which remained largely dominated by renters, saw their share of wealth to increase only from 3.6% to 4.6%.

Following this, the lowest 10% of the population who struggled the most during the pandemic saw its net wealth go backwards at a rapid rate, with the average amount of net wealth held by this decile down by over 400% from March, 2020.

“To see that the bottom half holds less than 5% of the wealth speaks to a wealth divide in Australia. And the finding that the poorest 10% of our nation has gone backwards, and is further in debt, is extremely worrying,” Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine, said.

“There are well-established links connecting overall wealth and wealth distribution to national wellbeing in the broadest sense, and we are committed to continuing to provide this kind of crucial data.”

Levine added that as a country, Australia had done pretty well since March, 2020, taking into account not just the covid pandemic, but also 13 interest rate increases, crushing cost-of-living pressures and alarming inflation.

Roy Morgan’s report, which provides data on Australians’ net wealth, calculates total personal assets (owner/ occupier home, superannuation/ pensions & annuities, deposit & transaction accounts, property investments, other direct investments & managed funds) and subtracting total personal debt (owner occupied mortgages, mortgage or investment property, personal loans, other loans & total cards).