Wealth and New Zealand
It’s about economics yet is understandable and readable: a rare combination. – Gordon Findlay, Booksellers New Zealand
Who owns what is one of the most crucial questions any society faces. New Zealand has long prided itself on being an egalitarian nation. But the disturbing reality, as charted in this book, is that the distribution of wealth in this country is extremely unequal.
Wealth and New Zealand is a forensic examination of one of the deepest inequalities that New Zealand faces. At its heart is the way that wealth shapes our experience of life, its presence opening up possibilities for some and its absence closing them off for many others.
Annual Rich List publications reveal enormous concentrations of wealth at the same time as the poorest New Zealanders are deeply in debt. But how has this come to be?
Drawing on previously unpublished data, this 2015 book explores what constitutes wealth in New Zealand – where, how and why it is held. In doing so, it addresses how wealth has come to be so unevenly distributed, and why this imbalance is something we can no longer ignore.