The New Zealand rich list twenty years on

Tim Hazledine and Max Rashbrooke

New Zealand Economic Papers, 2018, vol. 52, issue 3, 289-303

Abstract: Recent years have seen renewed interest in the dynamics of wealth accumulation and concentration. Questions arise as to how wealth is generated, held and perpetuated, and, following Piketty (2014), whether pre-existing wealth will grow more quickly than that generated out of the current economy. These questions have implications for the distribution of wealth (and income) and intergenerational mobility. To that end, this paper updates the analysis in Hazledine and Siegfried (1997) of the 1996 New Zealand ‘Rich List’ with analysis of the 2005 and 2015 Lists. We find that the wealth held by the richest 0.01% of the New Zealand population has risen from 6% of annual GDP in 1996 to more than 21% in 2015. There is some evidence that this wealth has persisted or will persist across multiple generations. However, there is also significant turnover in the make-up of the top 0.01%, and most of the fortunes are generated in industries deemed competitive.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2017.1354907

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