{"id":2697,"date":"2025-06-30T12:18:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T10:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/2025\/06\/30\/canarias-andalucia-extremadura-comunidades-menos-patrimonio-familiar-medio\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T12:18:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T10:18:56","slug":"canarias-andalucia-extremadura-comunidades-menos-patrimonio-familiar-medio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/2025\/06\/30\/canarias-andalucia-extremadura-comunidades-menos-patrimonio-familiar-medio\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canary Islands, Andalusia, and Extremadura are the regions with the lowest average family wealth."},"content":{"rendered":"

The ESADE Centre for Economic Policy has published the report \u201cWealth inequality between autonomous communities<\/a>\u201dThe study, which measures and compares wealth inequality among Spanish regions for the first time and analyzes its distribution between 2016 and 2022, with future updates planned, also measures and analyzes the distribution by asset type, providing insight into how household asset portfolios change as their wealth levels change. Thus, among Spanish regions (excluding Navarre and the Basque Country), Madrid has an average household wealth almost double the national average, followed by the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and Cantabria. The Canary Islands, Andalusia, and especially Extremadura have the lowest levels of wealth, at almost a third of Madrid's.<\/p>\n

They are the authors of this report Gustavo A. Marrero<\/a>, member of Center for University Studies on Social Inequality and Governance<\/a> and professor at the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism of the University of La Laguna and of the research group on inequality Equalitas<\/a>; Clara Mart\u00ednez-Toledano, from Imperial College London and the World Inequality Lab; Juan F. Palomino, from Complutense University of Madrid, Inet-Oxford and Equalitas; and Dmitry Petrov, from the University of Alcal\u00e1 and Equalitas.<\/p>\n

The report explains in its introduction that inequality is a difficult phenomenon to measure because it encompasses many dimensions and requires data that is not always available. The focus is usually on income, which represents the flow of earnings received over a period of time (for example, salary, dividends, rent, etc.). However, wealth, understood as the total assets (balance in bank accounts, stocks, housing, etc.) minus debts held at a given time, determines long-term spending and investment capacity and, along with income, also influences economic opportunities.<\/p>\n

At the national level, it is observed that the estimated average net wealth (after deducting debts) per household remained in real terms at around \u20ac380,000 between 2016 and 2022.<\/p>\n

Half of that wealth corresponds to housing: 30% is primary residence, almost 9% second homes, and investment housing increased from 11.5% in 2016 to almost 14% in 2022, making it the fastest growing component of wealth.<\/p>\n

The other half of the wealth is distributed between current accounts (more than 16%), self-employed business assets and shares (11% each), and pension plans, life insurance and funds (around 5% each).<\/p>\n

The wealthiest 11% of the population holds approximately 261% of total wealth, while the top 101% hold almost 601%. These figures remained stable between 2016 and 2022 and are consistent with those observed using comparable methods in other European countries. Meanwhile, the poorest half of the population holds only 71% of the total.<\/p>\n

The composition varies considerably depending on wealth level: for the lowest-income earners (20%), the most significant asset is checking accounts (63% of their portfolio), while real estate represents only 20%. The importance of real estate increases to 70% for those in the middle of the distribution, and decreases in favor of other assets in the higher segments. In the top 1%, the composition is reversed: business assets, stocks, and investment funds represent 60%, while real estate assets constitute only 25% of their wealth.<\/p>\n

Madrid and Catalonia are the most unequal regions, with similar levels of inequality, surpassed only by the islands (Canary and Balearic). Analyzing only the top 11 regions with the highest incomes (TP3T), Madrid's represents almost 35% of the total wealth, significantly higher than the next two (Galicia: 29%; Balearic Islands and Catalonia: 28%). All are above the national average (26%).<\/p>\n

Atlas of Wealth<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new Household Panel database, compiled by the Tax Agency (AEAT) together with the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IEF), has allowed this group of researchers to measure wealth distribution in Spain and, for the first time, also in the different autonomous communities.<\/p>\n

This database contains a representative sample at both the national and regional levels of 2.9 million individuals (1 million households) with detailed information on income and assets from informative tax returns and other official sources, between 2016 and 2022, for the autonomous communities of the common tax regime: that is, all except the Basque Country and Navarre, which, having their own special tax regime, are not part of this database.<\/p>\n

The resulting series are compiled and freely accessible on the web Spain Wealth Atlas<\/a>, This report presents an initial analysis of the wealth and distribution tool developed by the Caja Canarias Foundation and the Caixa Foundation (2024POB17). This tool visualizes the evolution of wealth and its distribution in Spain and its autonomous communities. Through the analysis of administrative tax data, it provides a comprehensive picture of all key dimensions of wealth and its distribution for each of the Spanish regions under the common tax regime, as well as for the country as a whole (excluding Navarre and the Basque Country). The Atlas covers the period 2016\u20132022 and will be updated regularly as new data becomes available. It could thus become a powerful tool for economic policy analysis in the future.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ESADE Center for Economic Policy has published the report \u201cWealth Inequality between Autonomous Communities\u201d, which\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,37,10],"tags":[1266,1267,1268,1269,1270,1271,1272,1273],"class_list":["post-2697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destacado","category-investigacion","category-portada-ull","tag-atlas-de-la-riqueza-de-espana","tag-clara-martinez-toledano","tag-desigualdad","tag-dimitry-petrov","tag-gustavo-a-marrero","tag-juan-f-palomino","tag-riqueza","tag-spain-wealth-atlas"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/spain-wealth-atlas-captura-300x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}