For middle- and lower-income households, home values represent the biggest chunk of total wealth.
But entrepreneurs typically capture but a slice of the total wealth they actually help bring about.
Here's a look at the total wealth of The Forbes 400 in each year it has been published.
In 1993, according to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, financial assets accounted for 14.6% of total wealth, and equities for 16%.
Which is around and about the entire and total wealth of the US and all the people who live in it.
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That's serious no matter how you look at it, because 60 percent of the total wealth of middle-class families is in their home equity.
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Together, there are 78 of them, ten more than last year, and they represent close to 10% of the total wealth of all 793 billionaires.
The largest contributing factor to the leap in total wealth held by the super-rich in Mexico is the addition of five new-comers and two comebacks to the rankings.
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Total wealth bottomed out the year prior to divorce.
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Though an all-time record, the total wealth of global billionaires grew just 2% over the year prior, an anemic growth rate compared to the 25% increase measured by Forbes in 2011 over 2010.
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The ratio of total wealth of the billionaires to gross domestic product (GDP) - an indicator of how extreme wealth compares with India's growth - rose from around 1% in the mid-1990s to 22% at the peak of the stock market boom in 2008, before dropping to 10% of GDP this year.
As such, total private wealth in the Old World actually contracted by .9% last year.
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Total private wealth in these four countries also grew at a tantalizing rate last year: 18.5%.
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From 1985 to 1994, it accounted on average for 56% of the total net wealth of households, far exceeding the 32% share of equities.
Its statement also said that outside of the formal bond market, no more than 35% of a bank's total issued wealth-management products should be invested in debt or used to make loans.
Analysing data put out by Forbes, the researchers found that though 21 Indian billionaires are "self-made", 40% of India's total billionaire wealth is owned by the "inherited and growing" category of businessmen.
Between 1975 and 1992, the wealth of the richest 1% rose from 22% of total national household wealth to 42%.
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The convention of measuring people's wealth by their total assets makes retiring Americans look poorer than they actually are.
The picture is even more dramatic if you consider wealth - the total value of a household or individual's assets such as their home and investments.
Banks are banned from investing more than 35% of the total proceeds from the sale of wealth-management products in loans.
Overall, the total size of assets managed by the wealth management division rose 6.5% in 2012.
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The region saw a 9.7% increase in high net worth individuals wealth over the last year, with a total of 3.3 million people swelling the ranks.
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That's an amount equal to investors' cash in money market funds, an amount equal to 35% of the nation's total debt, a large multiple of the capital in sovereign wealth funds.
His latest survey identified 270 dollar billionaires but the true total, he says, is probably double that because many Chinese are secretive about their wealth.
Total economic losses from weather-related disasters are higher in developed countries with more property and wealth at risk.
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