UK households wealth has risen by £1.7 trillion between 2012 – 2017

Due in a large part to the rising value of pensions and property Uk households have seen a £1.7 trillion boost to their net wealth between the periods of 2012 and 2017 say some recently released statistics by the ONS ( office for national statistics)

The ONS compiled a report called ‘the wealth in Great Britain’ and it showed that in 2012/2014 household total net wealth was £11.1 trillion, but that in 2016/17 net wealth had risen to £12.8 trillion, a staggering rise of £1.7 trillion.

Additionally, the average household net wealth in the United Kingdom was £260,000 in 2016/2017 which is up by over 15% on the figures for 2012/2014. This does not include the effects of inflation.

The proportion of total wealth that is owned by the richer households in GB compared to less well off households has not changed much at all though, not of any significance the ONS say, meaning that although median wealth has increased, there is no change in the distribution of that wealth.

The wealth of this top tier of 10% of households was listed to be approximately 5 x the wealth of the bottom half combined. During 2014-2016 the richest 10% of households owned a staggering 44% of the wealth with the bottom half owning only 9% of it.

The ONS stated that the vast majority of the wealth boost that has been seen in recent years is largely down to private pension wealth growth and net property value increases.

In total, private pension wealth was increased by twenty percent from £4.4trillion in 2012-2014 up to £5.3trillion in 2014-2016 though a third of this rise is down to market factors more than individuals actually adding more cash into their pension pots.

The same trend was seen in house price rises as net property wealth increased almost 20% from £3.9 trillion to over £4.6 trillion between the same time period 2012/14 – 2014/16 based on overall UK figures. London showed that average net property wealth was £351,000 in 2014-2016 period which demonstrates an overall increase of London Property Wealth of 33% over this period.

In 2014/16 , 49% of people that are aged between 16-64 years old were contributing to some type of private pension, which is a rise of 5% from the previous 44% that was recorded.

The Office for National Statistics also stated that total household debts were recorded at almost £1.25 trillion beteen 01-07-14 and the same time in 2016, which shows an increase in debt of 7%. Within this total figure over £1.1 trillion was in fact mortgage debt which is a 6% increase on the previous recorded period. £117 billion was financial debts and credit cards and other types of loans, eg/ guarantor loans which is a 15% increase.