• Wealth is the accumulation of valuable economic resources that can be measured in terms of real goods or monetary value.

  • Net worth is the most common measure of wealth, determined by taking the total market value of all owned physical and intangible assets less all debt.
  • The concept of wealth is usually applied only to scarce economic goods; Goods that are plentiful and free for everyone do not provide a basis for relative comparisons between people.
  • Unlike income, which is a flow variable, wealth measures the amount of valuable economic wealth accumulated at a given point in time.
  • Relative differences in wealth between people is what we usually refer to to determine who is rich and who is not.