Wealth of Germans on the rise: study

The assets of Germans increased in 2017, according to a study called Private Households and their Finances (PHF) published by the German central bank (Bundesbank) on Monday.

According to the Bundesbank study, households in Germany possessed net assets of 232,800 euros (263,200 U.S. dollars) in 2017, 18,300 euros more than in the previous study from 2014.

"The results for 2017 show that household wealth grew broadly between 2014 and 2017," the Bundesbank announced.

In 2017, the richest 10 percent of the private households had possessed about 55 percent of the total assets in Germany, 5 percent less than in 2014, while the poorer half of the German population remained at 3 percent.

Inequality would have changed "only slightly" in 2017 compared to 2014 and "no clear trend can be identified", according to the German central bank.

According to the Bundesbank study, real estate ownership would be "indicative" for high net wealth in Germany.

Among private households in Germany, who live in their own property, the median of net assets, the figure that divides households into a richer and a poorer half, was at 277,000 euros in 2017. For households that lived in a rented apartment, this median stood only at 10,400 euros.

According to the Bundesbank, there were also "significant differences" in the distribution of wealth between eastern and western Germany.

While the median for the assets of a private household in the German federal states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was 23,400 euros, it was about 4 times as high in the rest of Germany at 92,500 euros.

The study, in which the Bundesbank asks German households about their economic situation every three years, was conducted for the third time. For the study published today, around 5,000 households were surveyed between March and November 2017.