Media outlets often claim Americans are wealthier than Europeans, but it’s not true. Average wealth looks high, but is skewed by extreme inequality. US median wealth is quite low. This is the real data.
Commonly, the notion that the United States is the richest nation globally is widely accepted. Yet, this is a misconception.
Certainly, the US is home to some of the world’s richest individuals, including the wealthiest billionaires and the first trillionaire, Elon Musk.
However, assessing the country overall reveals that the US does not rank as particularly affluent compared to other developed economies.
This piece examines a detailed range of data and various metrics that collectively demonstrate why Americans are not more prosperous than their counterparts in other advanced nations.
Americans are NOT wealthier than Europeans
US news outlets frequently advance a misleading narrative suggesting that, for example, the United Kingdom is poorer than Mississippi, the poorest state in the US.
This falsehood is particularly widespread among the US right wing. Trump’s MAGA base often mocks Europeans by calling them “Europoors”.
Even some European media have published claims that “American families are so much richer than us”.
Such assertions are entirely unfounded and plainly untrue.
The Swiss banking giant UBS releases an annual Global Wealth Report, primarily intended for wealthy investors but offering relevant data for the general public.
In their 2026 edition, UBS calculated wealth per adult in the world’s 30 richest economies, providing both average and median wealth figures.
Indeed, the US ranks second in average wealth per adult, trailing only Switzerland.
Western media often emphasize this statistic; for instance, The Wall Street Journal highlighted it to argue that “Europeans get wealthier, but lag behind Americans”.
What the Wall Street Journal omitted, however, was the UBS data on median wealth per adult.
Examining median wealth reveals a drastically different scenario.
The US falls from second in average wealth down to 28th place by median wealth.
Median wealth levels in the US are surpassed by those in Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Israel, Sweden, Finland, Qatar, among others.
The average American is not wealthy.
If one insists Americans are prosperous, logically Austrians, Portuguese, and Slovenians must also be wealthy because their median citizens hold more wealth.
The stark disparity in the US arises because of extreme inequality, where a tiny number of billionaires inflate the average wealth figure.
Confusing mean (average) and median (middle)
This misunderstanding largely stems from a widespread lack of clarity around the difference between the mean (average) and median (middle value).
While significant wealth exists in the US, it is heavily concentrated in a small elite.
The US ranks among the countries with the highest wealth inequality worldwide.
The infographic below highlights how median and average wealth differ.
Consider this example: in a room of 10 people each owning $1000, both median and average wealth equal $1000.
But if one person is a billionaire and the remaining nine have only $1000 each, the average skyrockets to more than $100 million despite nine people having very little.
The median wealth remains $1000, reflecting the reality for the majority.
This key distinction is often ignored by US propagandists who deride the so-called “Europoors”.
This confusion is not confined to Trump supporters; mainstream American media also repeat the error, overlooking median wealth in favor of averages, as The Wall Street Journal did in its coverage of the UBS report.
The UK is NOT poorer than Mississippi
Thus, the frequent claim in US media that the United Kingdom is poorer than Mississippi relies on misinterpreting average versus median figures.
It also confuses median wealth with GDP per capita, which measures economic production, not wealth.
Despite Britain’s economic challenges, median wealth per adult in the UK exceeds $125,000 USD, whereas in the US it is about $69,000.
Conservative Americans, especially Trump supporters, also deride Canada as the “51st state”, claiming Canadians are less wealthy.
This again stems from a misunderstanding of median versus average.
Median wealth per adult in Canada is nearly $148,000 USD, more than twice that of the US median.
The US is one of the most unequal countries on Earth
On the surface, the US appears wealthy because a small elite flaunts vast fortunes.
UBS’s 2026 Global Wealth Report also measured wealth inequality across many nations using the Gini coefficient, a scale from zero (perfect equality) to one (extreme inequality).
The US ranks as the sixth-most unequal country globally, with a Gini coefficient of 0.77.
This level of inequality is comparable to Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy where the ruling family controls huge wealth reserves.
This reflects that the US is better described as an oligarchy, dominated by a few billionaires and now the first trillionaire.
Only four countries surpass the US in inequality:
- Brazil, with long-standing racial and economic divides;
- South Africa, historically governed by apartheid;
- Russia, which underwent massive privatization benefiting oligarchs;
- and the United Arab Emirates, an absolute monarchy with widespread exploitation of migrant labor.
The US shares similarities with these nations in terms of wealth distribution.
Its inequality exceeds that of many formerly colonized Global South countries, including India and Mexico.
In Europe, only Sweden approaches US-level wealth disparity.
Despite criticisms toward European elites – such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, dubbed “the president of the rich” – wealth inequality in France ranks 43rd globally, far below the US.
Similarly, the UK ranks 40th and Italy 49th in inequality, indicating much lower disparities than in America.
Western media also often depict China as severely unequal, but UBS data ranks mainland China 36th for wealth inequality, near Portugal (33rd) and the UK (40th).
While inequality exists in these countries, the US problem is exponentially greater.
The French economist Gabriel Zucman’s research shows that the 19 wealthiest US families—the top 0.00001%—control nearly 14% of national income, a historic peak in wealth concentration.
Today’s oligarchs—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison—are wealthier and wield greater power than the 19th-century “robber barons” like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt.
US billionaire Big Tech oligarchs sit with Donald Trump’s cabinet members at his inauguration in January 2025
Extreme income inequality in the US
The pervasive myth of American wealth is partly due to economists and Western media conflating GDP, income, and wealth, which are fundamentally distinct measures.
Wealth inequality is particularly critical; the rich are wealthy mainly through ownership of assets, not income.
Many US billionaires claim minimal income to avoid taxes.
While US wealth disparity is severe, income inequality is also very high.
Gabriel Zucman found that the wealthiest 10% captured about half of all income growth over the last 30 years, whereas the bottom 50% gained just 15–20% of it.
The richest 10% of Americans by income are responsible for about half of consumer spending, while the bottom 60% have seen their share of consumption steadily decline.
This is crucial since consumption drives the deindustrialized US economy, increasingly propelled by a small elite.
GDP is NOT a measurement of wealth
A widespread issue in mainstream economic reporting is the mistaken belief that GDP measures wealth, which it does not.
For example, the BBC reported in June that “the US economy keeps defying the odds” and continues outperforming peers.
Western media portray US economic health based on GDP growth, implying rising living standards for average Americans.
In reality, GDP only measures economic output—the total market value of goods and services produced annually.
GDP per capita does not equate to wealth or well-being.
A country’s GDP per capita can increase even if median or average living standards decline, particularly if gains benefit a small elite—as seen in the US.
Additionally, US GDP often appears inflated in comparisons because other countries’ GDPs, initially in local currencies, convert to US dollars at market exchange rates.
Accounting for purchasing power parity (PPP), US GDP per capita exceeds that of Germany, Canada, France, and the UK, but median wealth remains lower.
However, several European countries, including Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland, have higher PPP GDP per capita than the US.
Some Western economists prefer measuring GDP at market exchange rates rather than PPP, which overstates US economic size due to the overvaluation of the US dollar.
Donald Trump vocally complains about this overvaluation, linking it to US deindustrialization and dependency on inflated financial and real estate markets, where a strong dollar attracts foreign investment that supports bubble valuations.
Trump advocates for a weaker dollar to boost exports and domestic manufacturing.
In essence, the US seeks to maintain an overvalued dollar to keep asset prices high while also desiring a weaker currency for manufacturing competitiveness.
Trump regularly boasts about record stock indices like the S&P 500 and Dow Jones, but sustaining share price gains depends on a strong dollar; a significant depreciation would prompt foreign investors to pull back, crashing equity prices.
GDP data itself poses further problems.
Ireland’s example illustrates why GDP per capita can be misleading.
In 2014, Ireland’s GDP per capita (PPP) was $57,730, jumping to $71,900 in 2015, then skyrocketing to $152,630 by 2025—a near tripling in a decade.
Initially, US and Ireland’s GDP per capita were similar, but as of 2026, Ireland’s is 69% higher.
Did Ireland undergo an unprecedented economic boom or see rapid improvements in living standards? No.
Most of this increase stems from accounting maneuvers by US corporations like Apple, which registered intellectual property in Ireland to exploit low taxes.
They did not build factories that boosted local jobs or wealth.
Forbes warned in 2016 that GDP, while interesting, is not the definitive measure of an economy.
This phenomenon earned the nickname “leprechaun economics”.
Yet many Western economists and media continue to focus obsessively on GDP figures.
Another issue with GDP is that it aggregates market value across all sectors, though some industries matter more for living standards.
Geopolitical Economy Report used US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data to examine GDP contributions by industry, revealing the nation’s deindustrialization and financialization.
Manufacturing accounted for around 25% of US GDP in the 1950s but today contributes just over 10%.
Conversely, the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector expanded from just over 10% in 1947 to roughly 21% of GDP.
Wall Street is now the largest single US economic sector.
Next is professional and business services—mostly lawyers, managers, and consultants—representing bureaucratic overhead rather than productive innovation.
The expansion of finance and professional services correlates with declining living standards for median workers.
This explains how GDP per capita may rise while living conditions deteriorate.
Additionally, GDP includes “imputed rents to owner-occupied housing”, a theoretical figure estimating what homeowners would pay landlords in rent, which inflates GDP without real economic transactions.
Though a minor factor decades ago, imputed rent has become a growing GDP component since the 1970s.
By 2022, imputed rent composed 9.2% of US GDP, up from 1.2% in 1970.
Almost a tenth of US GDP is therefore purely accounting fiction.
These factors affirm GDP’s limitations as a wealth or well-being measure, despite its utility in tracking economic output.
Hence, it is absurd to use GDP per capita at market exchange rates to claim the UK is poorer than Mississippi—yet this misleading narrative persists in Western media.
US public-health outcomes are among the worst of the developed world
While this discussion has centered on economic figures, public health metrics also reinforce that the US is not genuinely affluent and has some of the poorest living conditions among developed nations.
Key among these is life expectancy.
Despite higher GDP per capita compared to France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK, US life expectancy is significantly lower.
The US average is 79 years, while Spain averages 84, France 83, the Netherlands 82, and the UK 81.
Similarly, infant mortality rates tell a similar story.
The US rate is six deaths per 1000 live births, double France’s three and higher than the UK’s four.
An even more stark indicator is the homicide rate.
The US averages six murders per 100,000 people, whereas France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK each report around one.
Healthcare outcomes in the US are even more glaringly deficient.
The American health-care system is so inadequate that even wealthy citizens suffer negative effects.
This is supported by peer-reviewed research from Brown University, summarized as follows:
The results revealed that people with more wealth tend to live longer than those with less wealth, especially in the U.S., where the gap between the rich and poor is much larger than in Europe.
Comparison data also showed that at every wealth level in the U.S., mortality rates were higher than those in the parts of Europe the researchers studied. The nation’s wealthiest Americans have shorter lifespans on average than the wealthiest Europeans; in some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.
In other words, the average American may hold more wealth than many Europeans due to extreme disparities, but even many rich Americans live shorter lives than poor Europeans.
This largely results from the poor state of US healthcare.
OECD data, from its annual Health at a Glance report, offers further clarity.
By comparing countries at similar development levels, the OECD finds the US is a notable outlier in healthcare spending.
The US spends 17.2% of its GDP on healthcare, nearly double the OECD average of 9.3%.
This is another factor inflating US GDP figures, reflecting its privatized, costly health system.
Despite this spending, health outcomes remain poor.
Per capita health expenditure also shocks.
Annually, the US health industry spends nearly $15,000 per person, with out-of-pocket costs higher than almost all other OECD countries.
The OECD average expenditure per capita is about $6000 (PPP-adjusted).
This means the US spends nearly three times more than the average, yet outcomes remain poor.
OECD studies analysing health spending against outcomes confirm the US as a stark outlier once again.
The pattern continues seen in data correlating health expenditure with access to quality care.
The data clearly shows the US operates as a plutocracy: the rich access quality healthcare, while the poor are left behind.
This is partly due to poor coverage levels.
Most OECD countries provide near-universal healthcare coverage (99% or 100%), mostly publicly funded.
Only Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the US have majority populations depending on private healthcare.
Average healthcare coverage across 38 OECD economies is 98%.
In the US, just 92% of the population has health coverage, one of the lowest rates in the OECD—behind countries such as Costa Rica, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Chile, and Poland.
Only Romania and Mexico have lower coverage than the US in the OECD.
Unlike the US, Mexico is addressing this by creating a free universal healthcare system, making its left-wing leader Claudia Sheinbaum one of the most popular politicians worldwide, with consistent approval ratings between 70% and 80%.
US oligarchs are very wealthy, but the median American is not
These combined indicators clearly reveal that the US is far from a truly wealthy nation; wealth is concentrated among a small elite.
Once the impact of these oligarchs is excluded, the average American’s standard of living is quite low compared to other developed countries.
Yet Western corporate media—including in Europe, where ownership is dominated by pro-US Atlanticist billionaires—continues to propagate the myth that the US neoliberal capitalist model creates widespread prosperity, and that countries like Britain are poorer than Mississippi because of their own failings.
Those promoting this narrative are disconnected from the harsh realities: many Americans face homelessness, poverty, overwhelming debt, paycheck-to-paycheck living, poor health, and low life expectancy.
This propaganda benefits the same oligarchs who profit from US financial bubbles, rampant scams, and exploitation of workers living on the edge economically.
For the median American, the American Dream is just a myth, as George Carlin famously observed: “you have to be asleep to believe it”.
Original article: geopoliticaleconomy.com
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