Britain suffers biggest fall in wealth in the rich world since the pandemic
Average wealth has fallen by more than a fifth in the last five years
Brits have experienced the largest slump in wealth in the rich world since the pandemic.
Listen to this article
Average wealth has fallen by more than a fifth in the five years since the pandemic, leaving families slightly better off than the French but poorer than the Dutch and the Italians.
Individual wealth - measured by the value of assets like property and stocks - deteriorated by around £28,500, according to UBS bank.
The decline is the worst seen across the 37 countries included in the survey.
The average Brit had assets worth £95,500 in 2025, with the value of wealth deteriorating due to the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine.
Read more: Wealth taxes, nationalised water, and more borrowing: what Andy Burnham might mean for your wallet
Read more: Households urged to send in meter readings as energy price cap jumps 13%
Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, said: “The UK had a brief period of notably higher inflation than Europe did, and that has distorted the real numbers.
“You had a couple of years of quite high inflation, partly because of the various peculiarities of our energy pricing structure.”
Inflation peaked in 2022 at 11.1% in October 2022.
South Korea saw the biggest gains, with average wealth rising by 55 per cent, followed by Russia and Taiwan.
Andy Burnham has pledged to tackle falling wealth, calling in the House of Commons last week for "a new determination to raise the living standards of every person in this land."
But the latest figures suggest the scale of the challenge is sizeable, and show that Sir Keir Starmer failed to make good on his promise to boost living standards.
Average individual wealth was down by 23 per cent both using average and median measures.
UK house prices - which have risen by 26 per cent since January 2020 - has also intensified pressure on budgets, inflation and energy bills have further eaten away at household budgets.
A Treasury spokesman said: “We have the right economic plan. Inflation is holding steady, the UK led G7 growth at the start of the year, and the IMF and OECD have both upgraded growth forecasts. Real wages have risen more in the last year than in the first ten years of the previous government.”