The Distribution of Wealth: What Is It,What Does It Mean,and Is It Important?

This paper summarises the available evidence on the present-day distribution of wealth in Australia, and draws comparison with international evidence. With this as background, I argue that an initiative to collect more up-to-date information on Australia's wealth distribution would be most useful if it focused on the least wealthy 90 to 95 per cent of the population, even though this group probably owns not more than half the nation's wealth.