The Rich Just Get Richer – How Many of Them Are there?

- By Andrew Thomas

March 2022

The top 10% of Britain’s population own half of the wealth in Great Britain. These are our prospects. They are our major donors, high value direct marketing prospects, corporate donors and future legacies but how much do we know about them.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released a new report “Household total wealth in Great Britain: April 2018 to March 2020” taking us to just when Covid started. It makes for a fascinating 11-page bedside read for prospect researchers and fundraisers alike. Click here to view and download the full report. The report offers insights from household wealth from this seventh round of the Wealth and Assets Survey, which we can all use for prospect research. The data tables further provide insight to help persuade Trustees and senior managers to focus on the wealthiest 10%.

Below are a few points which we hope will tempt you to click the link to learn more.

The richest 1% have a median wealth of £3.6million, leading up to the ultra-high net worth types. The wealth comes from:

  

Three quarters of it is in property and private pensions. For the top 10% only the richest will have large disposable incomes. For the rest, their giving comes from the investment yield, annual income or when they sell assets. For mid-range wealth, most of their wealth comes from their houses but for richer folk pensions dominate until you get to the really rich.

Again, aside from the really rich, the median wealthiest group were households where the head had retired. The Southeast dominates with assets rising by 43% in 12-14 years. The median wealth here is over £500,000. London has 15% of it. Scotland and the Northeast are the poorest. Look for the wealthier darker blue regions on this map.

 

 

 

 

Large employers, higher managerial and higher professional socio-economic status unsurprisingly capture the highest wealth bands and a degree is a common attribute of wealthy over 55 year olds.

There are lots of tables and more explanation in an accompanying report on Distribution of individual total wealth by characteristics in Great Britain. The report looks at distribution of wealth, regional inequalities, the generation gap and more.

 

What did I learn from this?

Just an hour reading this makes you where we should focus our effort. Our causes vary so digging into the tables offers great insight.

I have always thought that the top 10% had most of Britain’s wealth but if the median assets for the top 1% is only £3.6 million then the top 10% are mostly legacy and high value direct marketing prospects but the wealthiest big givers are in the top 1% of households plus international wealth residing in the UK. Maybe we should focus more on international wealth even if the Russian oligarchs are now off limits.

There were 27.8 million households in the UK in 2020. If 10% of the 27.8 million households have half of Great Britain’s Assets, then most fundraisers are competing for 2.7 million homes. Major donor fundraisers are competing for the top 1%. That is only 278,000 household to achieve all those big gift campaigns and programmes. Now that sobers me up!

Andrew Thomas is the Founder of Prospecting for Gold and an addict for anything about wealthy people. If you have any wealth related queries that you would like to run pass Andrew, then please send him an email at andrew@prospectingforgold.co.uk.