Strong growth of Norwegians' wealth: report

OSLO, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- New figures from Norway's statistics bureau showed strong increase of Norwegian population's wealth due to a long-term stock market upturn and housing price growth, online newspaper E24 reported Saturday.

Total gross wealth in 2017 was 9,975 billion kroner (1,145 billion U.S. dollars), which is an increase of 9.1 percent from the year before, according to the Statistics Norway (SSB).

While the wealthiest were getting richer and owned more than half of Norwegians' total net fortune, the income inequality in Norway is still stable, the report said.

The proportion of the population of so-called low income, which is lower than 60 percent of the average income, has been increasing ever since 2010 and was 11.2 percent of the total population in 2017.

An average household's fortune was 2.8 million kroner, SSB reported, adding that 85 percent of households are indebted and the average debt among them was 1.7 million kroner.

Most of Norwegians' wealth is in real estate and more and more people are buying a secondary house.

Last year, equity and fund assets amounted to 1,270 billion kroner, which is more than 20 percent more than in 2016 and twice as much as in 2010. (1 U.S. dollar = 8.71 Norwegian kroner)