For the inequality files

With French economist Thomas Piketty still getting rockstar treatment in the international business press more than six months after publishing his book on inequality, it’s easy to get hung up on the first world rich v poor debate. Bring the third world in too and the picture changes. Taking figures from the Forbes global rich list we worked out how well off New Zealanders are, compared with the rest of the world. We found that even on a beneficiaries annual earnings, Kiwis are just outside the richest 15% of the world’s population. And our top earners are part of a pretty exclusive club.