The average personal amount of savings are between $ 2,900 for the USA and ¥ 5,806,554 for Japan. The USA comes last in our ranking, but their neighbor Canada is one of the richest countries regarding personal savings.
I would expect there's a distinction to be made here between different types of average. It's not too clear at first glance (at least to me) how the article makes its calculations.
If average savings are above zero, I would assume this refers to the mean average, which is disproportionately impacted by a relatively small number of people who have huge savings. I am making assumptions here, but I do think that the majority of people are in debt. If you took median average instead, i.e. the savings of someone who has 50% of people with more savings than them and 50% of people with less, then that person would be below zero, i.e. be in debt.
As a general point I think that different types of average should be used in different circumstances, and ideally when one is used the others should be quoted as well. Otherwise simple use of the mean average can be used to lead people into false inferences, in this case that most people have a small amount of savings, when in all likelihood most people are actually in debt and a small number of people who have huge savings pull the mean average up above zero.
Cnut237 your observation is amazing. I totally agree with you! Most people are in debt, but with small people who have huge savings are rising the statistic over zero. Article
does not show how they get calculation, and what parameters they used for that.
Generally speaking majority of the people is in debt, there is no doubt in that. Is there a chance for that to be changed in the future? That`s the right question to ask here!
I hope there's a chance that inequality can be reduced, but trends suggest that it has been worsening dramatically over the last few decades. There's a good book about this, 'Capital in the 21st Century' by Thomas Piketty. There's a brief summary with a few key charts here: https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts
Also the World Inequality Database provides a lot of good information: https://wid.world/
Here's a good example. It's slightly exaggerated (because the axis doesn't start at 0%), but the trend is clear.
