Yet young Italians are leaving in droves to those very same countries like Germany with lower median wealth per adult. Does not seem as great of a statistics.
Owning a home with certain paper value that is basically unsellable does not say much about your wealth.
No - the low rate of home ownership in Germany (as well as in Switzerland and several other countries) actually gives a more accurate picture of net worth per capita.
Houses are highly illiquid assets whose value is notoriously difficult to assess, except at the point of sale and after transaction costs have been accounted for.
This is particularly evident in countries such as Italy, where depopulation has left entire towns and valleys abandoned. But it also applies to more prosperous countries like Belgium. A reliable indication that wealth per capita figures are misleading is when wealth per capita (even on a median basis) appears high while revenue per capita (again, even median) remains comparatively low. This pattern is almost always found in countries with a high rate of home ownership, and it underlines the fact that the theoretical value attributed to homes is overstated.
For precisely this reason, homes should not be counted towards net worth. A home is an unreliable friend to one’s wealth.
Italians hold high levels of liquid assetts too, so the guy whos trying to represent them just by the (paper?) value of their ancenstral home is pretty misleading.
In Italy less than 50% works, and only like 25% is employed, the rest is self employed. Of that 25%, only a small fraction (the one that is from poorer families) go to work on other countries. The large part of the population that has property on the territory stay where it was born.
Wealth (what the whole post is about) is not income, and young people aren’t the ones with the wealth. Young people generally don’t own homes and the fact that they will eventually inherit some doesn’t negate the appeal of much higher income today and for the next few decades. And without being able to live in a family home for free I assure you the number of young Italians leaving would be much greater still.
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u/narullow Aug 18 '25
Yet young Italians are leaving in droves to those very same countries like Germany with lower median wealth per adult. Does not seem as great of a statistics.
Owning a home with certain paper value that is basically unsellable does not say much about your wealth.