Magazines like Forbes and Bloomberg have a habit of ranking the world's richest people, but it's not that kind of list Håkan Johansson has helped create.
The World Elite Database (WED) has a different purpose.
This is a database that not only captures national economic power, but also global economic power, explains Johansson, who is a professor of social work at Lund University and chairman of the network of researchers who have worked with the database.
3,500 names
The selection has been made based on three criteria:
1. The individuals lead one of the largest companies in their country.
2. The individuals are wealthy enough to be able to take control of the largest companies.
3. The individuals hold positions that give them the opportunity to set rules for how the market functions.
This is the first international database of the economic elite. It covers 16 countries and includes large parts of the world's economy. In total, there are approximately 3,500 names, about 140 individuals are Swedes, says Johansson.
The people on the list resemble each other.
They are of similar age. They are predominantly men and predominantly born in the country they live in. We can see that it is significantly harder for women to reach these power positions.
Stand out
In one way, the Swedes on the list stand out. Only five percent of our economic elite have a doctoral degree, which can be compared to Germany where 35 percent of the names in the database have a doctoral degree in their education.
Our national characteristics are shared with the other Scandinavian countries on many levels. We see that you are often born in the economic power center, i.e. Stockholm. If you are born in the countryside, it is harder to reach this position. It is not like that in Norway.
It is also the case that the Swedish economic elite has a strong connection to the Stockholm School of Economics. Different economic educations are important.
Why the database is needed
The names in the database are anonymized for the public. The information about gender, education, education level, and place of birth. And what is it supposed to be used for?
Johansson explains.
It helps us understand that people with great economic power have great social influence. An important part of the research is to create more knowledge about social phenomena.
The database consists of approximately 3,500 names from 16 countries that together account for 54 percent of the world's GDP.
The American economic elite is the oldest, with a median age of 62 years. The youngest are China and Poland, where the median is 55 years.
In China, the place of birth stands out, nearly half of the individuals in the database are born in smaller towns.
A master's degree is the most common education level, except in Argentina, Italy, and the UK where a bachelor's degree is the most common. The lowest education level has individuals who have inherited their wealth.
The database has been compiled by a network of about 70 researchers from Chile, Denmark, Italy, France, Finland, China, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and the USA.
