If you live in a good home, have plenty and can read, you are a member of a very select group.
And if you have a good house, can read and have a computer, you are among the very elite.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness…you are more fortunate than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation….you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death….you are fortunate, more than three billion people in the world can’t.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep….you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace….you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married….you are very rare, even in the United States.
If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful…..you are blessed because the majority can, but most don’t.
If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder…you are blessed because you can offer a healing touch.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are!!
The source of the above is “anonymous”, so it might be urban folk lore, but it sure feels true. Use with caution. Also quoted as a part of the “a village of 100 people“.
For more exacting data, check this 2006 research titled, “The World Distribution of Household Wealth: Pioneering Study Shows Richest Two Percent Own Half World Wealth” by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University:
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER).
The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken also reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.
The research finds that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which — with 37 million members worldwide — is far from an exclusive club.