World's 500 richest people added more wealth this year

One rating agency says that only India and China get richer during Coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic that's led to more than 1 million deaths globally has also led to a decline in individual wealth, yet household wealth largely held up and even increased in China and India. That's one of the main findings in Credit Suisse Group AG's 2020 Global Wealth Report released Thursday. Thanks to government and central-bank actions to mitigate the Covid-19 fallout, global wealth rebounded from an initial slump in the first quarter of the year, adding $1 trillion by June after ending 2019 at $399.2 trillion.

According to Anthony Shorrocks, Economist and one of the report's authors, said,"given the damage inflicted by Covid-19 on the global economy, it seems remarkable that household wealth has emerged relatively unscathed,"adding that the findings are based on provisional household balance sheets for the second quarter issued by few countries. Global wealth creation is expected to rebound next year as the economy recovers. The "main outlier" is North America, the report says, where the economy is hobbled by the "continued weakness due to the high prevalence of Covid-19" in the U.S. The region's wealth per adult is projected to drop 5% this year, and remain near that level in 2021. Only China and India saw gains in household wealth in the first half of the year, growing by 4.4% and 1.6%, respectively. Latin America suffered the most, with a 13% plunge, as currency devaluations aggravated losses in gross domestic product. witzerland, the Netherlands, Taipei and Hong Kong saw gains, while Norway and the U.K. posted the biggest declines.

The findings come as wealth gains, especially in the U.S. tech world, have been increasingly scrutinized as millions lost their jobs due to the coronavirus hit. Amazon.com Inc.'s Jeff Bezos -- the world's richest person -- has amassed more than $73 billion this year, taking his fortune to $188 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires Index. Facebook Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg has gained $27 billion to more than $105 billion, while the rise of Zoom Video Communications Inc. has pushed up Chairman Eric Yuan's net worth by $22 billion. Overall, the world's 500 richest people have added $970 billion to their combined wealth this year, the Bloomberg index shows.