skip to main content
Newsroom

Overview    News

The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018

The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future is part of the World Bank’s effort to measure national wealth and changes in wealth, building on two previous books: Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st century (2006) and The Changing Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the new Millennium (2011).

date:  30/01/2018

The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future is part of the World Bank’s effort to measure national wealth and changes in wealth, building on two previous books: Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st century (2006) and The Changing Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the new Millennium (2011). In the book, wealth is reported for 141 countries between 1995 and 2014 as the sum of produced capital and urban land, natural capital, human capital, and net foreign assets. From the previous editions, progress had been made in the measurement of wealth including substantial improvements in estimates of natural capital and the use for the first time of household surveys to measure human capital. In this way, the analysis goes beyond the standard measures of economic performance, such as GDP and GNI. Data show that while global wealth has increased by 66% in the recorded period, per capital wealth has not and inequality in overall wealth still persists.

Read the full book and the press release.