A new analysis by the Equality Trust reveals that the combined wealth of Britain's 157 billionaires is equivalent to more than a fifth of the country's GDP, a fivefold increase since 1990. The charity describes this trend as Britain's 'ghost GDP', arguing that headline economic growth has become increasingly disconnected from the everyday realities faced by most people.
When the Sunday Times first published its rich list in 1989, 15 billionaires held a total of £27bn, accounting for about 4p in every pound of GDP. Today, the trust calculates that 157 billionaires hold just under £670bn, more than 22p in every pound. Priya Sahni-Nicholas, co-executive director of the Equality Trust, said: 'Workers have endured the longest pay squeeze in living memory. But the richest 50 families now hold more wealth than the poorest 34 million of us combined.'
Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Paris School of Economics, said that while postwar GDP growth broadly reflected income gains for most people, 'today, there is a total disconnect between macroeconomic indicators and the reality of income gains for most people'. He added that the rise of super-rich wealth and accounting manipulations by multinational companies were distorting macroeconomic numbers.
The trust's data show that globally, billionaire wealth has grown from 2.5% to 14.1% of GDP since 1990, but Britain's trajectory from 4% to 22% is even more extreme. Simon Pittaway, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, noted that although traditional measures of wealth inequality have not risen, the absolute gaps between typical households and those at the top have grown significantly. He said that saving all earnings over a working lifetime would no longer move a typical person up the wealth ladder.
The rich list, which once tracked 1,000 individuals, now covers only 350, with entry requiring at least £350m in wealth. The analysis also found that while in 1990 three billionaires were primarily linked to property, inheritance and finance, today finance accounts for about 30% of all billionaire wealth. Sahni-Nicholas described this as 'rentier capitalism', which extracts value from the economy rather than creating it. Separate data from the Health Foundation and Unicef highlight wider social outcomes: healthy life expectancy has fallen by two years to under 61, and the UK ranks poorly on child wellbeing, mental health and income inequality among wealthy nations.
