<p>There isn't any dataset that would have all you are asking for but they are datasets that have some of the data you want separately.</p>
<p><strong>Government Assets</strong>:</p>
<p>The data on governments assets exist although they are bit spotty. You can have look at <a href="https://data.imf.org/?sk=82a91796-0326-4629-9e1d-c7f8422b8be6" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Public Sector Balance Sheets IMF dataset</a>, although data exist only for some countries some years and it does not actually include all government assets just central government assets so it underestimates total assets owned by the government but I guess its better than nothing.</p>
<p><strong>Private Assets</strong></p>
<p>There are data on average net assets held by top 10% (or also different deciles) at <a href="https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">World Inequality Database</a>.</p>
<p>There aren't data on wealth by capital and labor since there is no clear way to calculate that. Income can be calculated as income share going to capital and income share going to a labor and data for this does exist. Empirically almost every person in modern society gets some labor income and some capital income (e.g. for example through return on 401K account). Wealth is saved income and since money is fungible it is not possible to distinguish how much person has saved from capital portion of income and how much from labor portion. Moreover, nowadays empirically many rich people derive high income from labor (e.g. superstar CEO's etc), so its no longer possible to for example just use top 10% of wealth as some proxy for capital owners.  You could probably try to classify people by share of their income derived from particular source based on their tax returns but such micro data are never public, and frankly there is no way to anonymize them so they can't even be public, so you won't have access to them.</p>
<p>Also, to my best knowledge there is no dataset that would separate net assets into money and other assets. There are some data that look at a share of financial wealth, although not all financial wealth is money, but that is probably as close as you can get you can have look at <a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-report-2022-en.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-22T15:22:49.887Z
Furthermore there is no market for many of the most valuable government assets so they're invaluable. For example, Trump wanted the U.S. to buy Greenland which Denmark said is not for sale.
H2ONaCl
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-08-23T11:25:49.230Z
2023-08-23T11:25:49.230Z
1muflon1
<p>Are there some global statistics comparing how much of the world wealth belongs to governments and how much is held privately (capitalists and workers)?</p>
<p>Ideally subdividing figures amongst money and material possession. I have always wondered how much is public and how much is private in the economy and if money owned by capitalists are as much as their material possessions, much less or much more.</p>

<data-request>
Private vs public wealth
Antonio Bonifati
# Private vs public wealth

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-08-23)

Are there some global statistics comparing how much of the world wealth belongs to governments and how much is held privately (capitalists and workers)?

Ideally subdividing figures amongst money and material possession. I have always wondered how much is public and how much is private in the economy and if money owned by capitalists are as much as their material possessions, much less or much more.

**Tags:** data-request


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2023-08-23. Score: 1

There isn't any dataset that would have all you are asking for but they are datasets that have some of the data you want separately.

**Government Assets**:

The data on governments assets exist although they are bit spotty. You can have look at [Public Sector Balance Sheets IMF dataset](https://data.imf.org/?sk=82a91796-0326-4629-9e1d-c7f8422b8be6), although data exist only for some countries some years and it does not actually include all government assets just central government assets so it underestimates total assets owned by the government but I guess its better than nothing.

**Private Assets**

There are data on average net assets held by top 10% (or also different deciles) at [World Inequality Database](https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/).

There aren't data on wealth by capital and labor since there is no clear way to calculate that. Income can be calculated as income share going to capital and income share going to a labor and data for this does exist. Empirically almost every person in modern society gets some labor income and some capital income (e.g. for example through return on 401K account). Wealth is saved income and since money is fungible it is not possible to distinguish how much person has saved from capital portion of income and how much from labor portion. Moreover, nowadays empirically many rich people derive high income from labor (e.g. superstar CEO's etc), so its no longer possible to for example just use top 10% of wealth as some proxy for capital owners. You could probably try to classify people by share of their income derived from particular source based on their tax returns but such micro data are never public, and frankly there is no way to anonymize them so they can't even be public, so you won't have access to them.

Also, to my best knowledge there is no dataset that would separate net assets into money and other assets. There are some data that look at a share of financial wealth, although not all financial wealth is money, but that is probably as close as you can get you can have look at [Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report](https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-report-2022-en.pdf).

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Furthermore there is no market for many of the most valuable government assets so they're invaluable. For example, Trump wanted the U.S. to buy Greenland which Denmark said is not for sale.  

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