Income and wealth percentile in Singapore

What the numbers say about Singapore.

Singapore concentrates more wealth and income per square kilometre than any major economy on earth. Median income per adult is around S$90,600, with an average of S$160,000. The gap between the two already reveals how much top-end concentration the city holds. A small population, almost no natural resources, and a deliberate policy choice fifty years ago to become a regional services hub built that position. Today, finance and shipping anchor the formal economy.

Wealth statistics need a careful reading because of who is counted. Roughly 30 percent of the resident population is foreign-born, including a large share of high-net-worth individuals who have moved their primary residence here in the past decade. Median household net worth per adult is around S$152,000, but the average runs above S$694,000, with the top 1% threshold above S$7.2 million. Family offices have multiplied since 2020. Hong Kong's political shift, China's wealth diversification, and Singapore's regulatory clarity have all pulled assets toward the city-state.

Income distribution within Singapore reflects the dual structure of the labour market. The top end concentrates in finance, technology, shipping, legal services, and senior public-sector roles. Foreign-talent visas allow the city to import skilled workers without the cost-of-living drag becoming politically intractable, though that has changed somewhat since 2022. The bottom end is mostly held by foreign work-permit holders in construction, marine, and domestic services, who are not full residents and whose wages are not always captured in distribution statistics. The Singaporean citizen median is therefore higher than the headline figure, since the bottom of the curve is filled by transient foreign labour. Cross-country comparisons miss this nuance and tend to flatter the city.

Housing complicates the wealth picture. Roughly 80 percent of Singaporean citizens live in HDB public housing, which is sold leasehold and excluded from many private-wealth metrics. The other 20 percent hold private property, which has appreciated sharply for two decades. Cooling measures, including higher stamp duties for foreign buyers introduced in 2023, have slowed the top end of the market without touching the HDB layer. The result is a wealth distribution where most citizens hold meaningful state-supported housing assets, while a smaller private-property class dominates the upper deciles.

Two themes shape the next decade. Singapore is now Asia's pre-eminent wealth-management centre, and the regulatory and political conditions that created that role show no sign of changing. And the city-state remains very small, which limits how much further the high-end labour market can grow without immigration becoming a more contested issue than it already is. Both forces will keep concentrating the top of the curve.