What counts as a 1 percenter in New Zealand these days?
The ‘1%’ is often used as shorthand for the wealthiest people on the planet.
Last week, Stats NZ released updated net worth data that gives the opportunity to see what that looks like in New Zealand now.
Net worth is calculated as a measure of everything a person or household owns, minus their debts.
Here’s how it breaks down.
To be in the top 50%:
For households: At least $524,788
For individuals: At least $134,850
For the top 10%:
For households: At least $2.414 million
For individuals: At least $1.226m
For the top 5%:
For households: At least $3.718m
For individuals: At least $1.883m
For the top 1%:
For households: At least $8.727m
For individuals: At least $4.735m
The median wealth of a 1% individual is $7.191m, and for a household it is $11.5m. That means half the 1 percenters have wealth below that level, and half are worth more than that.
Three years earlier, the median for a 1% household was $11.2m.
In the year ended June 2024, the median net worth of all New Zealand households was $529,000. This was 33% higher than in the year ended June 2021, when the median household net worth was $399,000
Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said it was “confronting” that the median wealth of a top 1% household was 22 times that of all households.
He said the top 50% had 93.3% of all household wealth.
The wealthier a household was, the less of their assets were tied up in owner-occupied real estate. The wealthiest 20% had more than twice as much in pension funds as the next 20%, and eight times as much as the poorest 20%.
The increase in property values between 2021 and 2024 was one of the factors cited by Stats NZ as driving the overall increase in household wealth through that period but sharemarkets have also performed strongly.
“A median household would have basically nothing in bonds, stocks, that sort of thing. But quintile five, the top 20% – 18% of their assets are coming from stocks, bonds,” Olsen said.
The middle group of households had 92% of their wealth in their own home.
“If you think about three groups in society – those that don’t have any substantial assets, don’t have any property or shares or anything, they haven’t shifted much at all over the last decade,” Olsen said.
“The most wealthy group has property and other investments and the middle group has more property than anything else, as property has increased in value the gap has become a bit smaller between the middle wealthy and the super wealthy.”
He said people should not think that $11.5m was the top of the wealth table in New Zealand, either. “There’s quite a long tail, we’ve got some households worth over $1 billion, not many but there is a long tail from $11.5m out to there.”
Council of Trade Unions policy director Craig Renney said the data showed 80% of people had wealth of less than $1m. “It doesn’t appear as if the problems facing New Zealand in terms of wealth distribution have moved at all.”
He said someone at the 40th percentile would have wealth of about $128,000. If both they and someone with wealth of $11.5m received 5% returns on their wealth each year, the person at the 40th percentile would grow their wealth by $6400 a year while the median richest 1 percenter would add more than $575.000.
He said that was one reason that his organisation called for a capital gains tax. A lot of the wealth in the richest households would come from capital gains. “Our tax settings on capital are probably helping to do that.”
He said most people’s wealth was in family homes that would not be affected by a tax.
“We have a very unequal society in New Zealand and the distribution of wealth is causing huge challenges – those who are able to accrue wealth are able to get even more of it in the future.”
rnz.co.nz
