Scots see highest ever level of wealth

SCOTLAND’S household wealth has broken the £1trillion barrier for the first time.

But the gap between rich and poor is still too wide, a report warns, with younger generations worse off and their futures depending more on inheritance than earnings.

Research by the Resolution Foundation shows typical Scottish wealth is now £237,000 per household, compared with £259,000 for Britain as a whole.

More than half of people’s wealth is locked up in pension savings, compared with 42 per cent across Britain, according to analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Typical pension wealth in Scotland is higher than in Britain as a whole (just under £70,000 compared with £58,000) while property wealth is lower (£65,000 compared with £95,000).

But people born in the second half of the 1970s have a third less wealth at the age of 35 compared to those born five years previously (£33,000 against £52,000).

This is attributed in part to falling home ownership rates for young adults in Scotland, down from 48 per cent in 2003

‘Harder to earn your way to affluence’

to 32 per cent. The report also highlights that wealth in Scotland is nearly twice as unequally held as income, with a quarter of Scots having less than £500 of net savings and 7 per cent having zero savings or negative balances in their current accounts.

Resolution Foundation director Torsten Bell said: ‘Wealth in Scotland has grown fast in recent years and will come to play a bigger role in determining life chances in the decades to come.

‘This increase in wealth across Scotland has sat alongside falling home ownership rates, particularly for young families, who are struggling to accumulate wealth as preceding generations have been able to.

‘The accumulation, distribution and taxation of wealth should be at the centre of policy debates in Scotland in the years ahead.

‘If current trends continue, it will become much harder in modern Scotland to earn your way to being truly wealthy, and young people’s prospects will depend less on their ability, and more on whether or not they inherit assets from relatives.’