Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

In other words, everyone owns on average between a third and half a year’s income worth of furniture, refrigerators, cars, and so on, or 10,000–15,000 euros per capita for a national income on the order of 30,000 euros per capita in the early 2010s. This is not a negligible amount and accounts for most of the wealth owned by a large segment of the population. Compared, however, with overall private wealth of five to six years of national income, or 150,000–200,000 euros per person (excluding durable goods), about half of which is in the form of real estate and half in net financial assets (bank deposits, stocks, bonds, and other investments, net of debt) and business capital, this is only a small supplementary amount. Concretely, if we were to include durable goods in private wealth, the only effect would be to add 30–50 percent of national income to the curves shown in Figure 5.3 without significantly modifying the overall evolution.13