Wealth - Meaning Explained

All types of goods manufactured in a specific period of time in a country are called the wealth of that country. Goods can be of various types, long lasting goods such as factory, mosque or home, some goods are required for instant consumption for example food, grains etc. and some are intermediate among these such as washing machines, television and radio etc. Wealth generally means a stock of goods existing at a particular time that conform to certain requirements. Such goods must possess four qualities.


Firstly they must have utility - meaning must be able of yielding satisfaction.
Secondly they must have money value.
Thirdly they must be limited in supply
Fourthly the ownership of such goods must be equipped of being transferred from one person to another.
Skills and services are usually excluded from it because they cannot be transferred from one person to another although they do possess the rest of the qualities. That is why wealth is restricted to the tangible goods only.

The ownership of the wealth can be categorized into the following three categories

Personal Wealth

It consists of of personal belongings such as jewellery, textbooks, clothes, motor cars, domestic equipment and house one lives in. All these things give satisfaction, have money value, are limited in supply and their ownership is transferable from person to person.

Business Wealth

It includes things such as factory buildings, raw materials, machinery, railway and airways systems, canals, roads and lands. These are wanted normally to produce other goods which can be used as personal wealth or social wealth. This kind of wealth is generally referred to as Land or Capital.

Social Wealth

This type of wealth is collectively owned and involves all property owned by the state or local authorities such as schools, public libraries, town halls, parks, railway stations and government offices

Above are the particular concepts of wealth which strictly deals with our economic activities and financial possessions.

The word wealth is derived from an old English word "weal" and "th" meaning well-being and condition respectively. Now it will be read as " the condition of well being" and no involvement of finances. How can we achieve the state of well being for that we need to re-categorized it as Genuine Wealth. It is commonly said that "Knowledge is Wealth", why knowledge and why not money? This will lead us to comprehend the meaning of Genuine Wealth. It is described as all those things that make life worthwhile come under the category of Genuine Wealth. It is a process and an accounting tool to get and acquired our core values which we are losing day by day, human life has become imbalance with the materialistic raise in financial possessions and reduce moral vales (genuine wealth). Knowledge is wealth because it increases our moral potential and increases our mental level with which we can achieve equilibrium in life by applying knowledge to the economic activity and to teach moral values.