[eugenejen]

The only thing I don't like people to repeat about 1% owns 50% wealth is because that's just a mathematical truth from Pareto principle.

If 20% populations owns 80% resources. Just recursively applying Pareto principle. You see 0.8% populations owns 51.2% resources.

So we are in fact now efficiently using resources around the world to support 7 billions populations.

Of course this ignores our biological tendency of protecting our offspring. So we try to pass down what we have to our children by non productivity related measures (such as lenient estate tax, immigration restrictions). That's the real reasons for the 99% population feels 'unfair'.

If we are really fair, we should open first world border to all poor people around the world, right? But we don't. Same as people of wealth want to pass down their wealth to their children as much as possible. Or even try to starting a dynasty.

[ogrisel]

The Pareto distribution has a parameter (alpha in the mathematical formulation used on Wikipedia). If the value of that parameter evolves over time that might demonstrate an evolution of economic inequality.

But indeed access to credit and amount of debt makes it hard to interpret the results on wealth. Income distribution might be easier to interpret.