Despite our global economic hard times, the world has more than enough wealth to ensure every adult on the planet a significant nest egg.
This heartening news comes from the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse. Its first-ever Global Wealth Report crunches data for over 200 countries and maps the wealth belonging to the world's richest people - and everybody else.
Those inclined to see the sunny side will certainly find it in these numbers. They indicate that total global net worth, despite the 2008 global economic meltdown, has rocketed up 72 per cent since 2000.
The world's 4.4 billion adults, the bank's researchers note, now hold $194.5 trillion (£121.7 trillion) in wealth.
That's enough, if this asset stash were shared evenly across the globe, to guarantee every adult in the world a $43,800 (£27,400) net worth.
But the world's wealth, of course, isn't evenly divided. And this study helpfully breaks down the arithmetic of our staggering global unevenness.
At the wealth spectrum's uppermost reaches we've got just over 1,000 billionaires and another 80,000 "ultra-high net worth individuals" worth over $50 million (£31m) each. We can add into this wealthy summit another 24 million adults worth between $1m (£626,000) and $50m.
At other end of the global spectrum sit three billion people - more than two-thirds of the world's adults - whose wealth averages less than $10,000 (£6,300).
About 1.1 billion of them have a net worth of less than $1,000 (£626).
"Our analysis," the Credit Suisse study says in a whopping understatement, "finds some stark differences in the distribution of wealth."
Here's perhaps the study's starkest data snapshot - half the people on earth who are 20 and older hold under $4,000 (£2,500) in net worth, after subtracting debts from assets. They wield less than 2 per cent of global wealth.
Meanwhile, the world's richest 1 per cent - adults who have at least $588,000 (£368,000) to call their own - hold 43 per cent of the world's wealth.
As the report underscores, personal wealth actually means much more in some places than others.
If you live in a society with a frayed social safety net, your personal wealth is crucial. Without substantial net worth, you're going to be vulnerable "to shocks like unemployment, ill health or natural disasters."
By contrast, if you live in a society with a robust safety net - a nation that boasts "good public health care, high-quality public education, generous state pensions" and the like - the size of your personal fortune matters considerably less.
Take, for example, the US. No other nation, to be sure, holds as much total wealth as this superpower. With only 5.2 per cent of the world's population, the US boasts 23 per cent of the world's adults worth at least $100,000 (£62,600) and an even greater proportion, 41 per cent, of the world's millionaires.
But people in the United States, a society with an inadequate social safety net, need more personal net worth than those who live in nations with healthier social service networks.
This means that average Joes and Janes in many nations with stronger social safety nets than the US actually have more net worth than their US counterparts.
Consider Canada, a nation with national public health insurance.
Credit Suisse calculates the 2010 median wealth in Canada, the wealth of the typical Canadian family, at $94,700 (£59,000). That's about double the $47,771 (£30,000) US median net worth.
"The past decade has been especially conducive to the establishment and preservation of large fortunes," Credit Suisse sums up.
Banking giants may be able to live comfortably with that reality. The rest of us need to change it.
