Commentary
Nearly half of the world’s wealth, 47.5%, or $213 trillion, is held by just 1.5% of the world’s adult population.
According to the 2024 UBS Global Wealth Report (PDF), which covers 56 markets accounting for 92% of global wealth, there are at least 58 million billionaires in the world, making up 1.5% of the global adult population.
The United States has the most billionaires, with around 21.95 million people with seven-figure fortunes or more. China comes in a distant second with around 6.01 million, followed by the UK (3.06 million), France (2.87 million) and Japan (2.83 million).
UBS defines wealth as the value of a household’s financial and real assets minus its liabilities.
According to UBS, global wealth in dollar terms is expected to fall 3% in 2022 before growing 4.2% in 2023.
“When you think about billionaires and the wealthy in general, there is a core of indigenous billionaires who have a strong attachment to their country. And then there is also a globally mobile element. [is able to] “Changing residence is fairly easy,” UBS economist Samuel Adams told Al Jazeera.
The UK is expected to lose the most billionaires by 2028, with almost one in six UK billionaires losing their status. The Netherlands is also a country expected to lose 4 percent of its billionaires by 2028.
“What we want to say about the Netherlands and the UK is that they both already have a lot of super-rich people, they have a growing core, but they have a very mobile layer. [element] We are trying to avoid that. And in the global race for wealth, we may see an exodus of the more mobile segments of the wealthy. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the economies aren’t working. Wealth is still being created in these countries. It’s just that the more mobile segments may be considering all the different places they want to live.”
How is wealth distributed around the world?
According to the World Wealth Report, almost half of the world’s wealth, 47.5%, or $213 trillion, is held by just 1.5% of the world’s adult population. These are households with more than $1 million.
In contrast, people with assets of less than $10,000 own just 0.5% of global wealth ($2.4 trillion) but account for 39.5% of the world’s adults.
Households with assets between $10,000 and $100,000 account for 42.7% of adults and account for 12.6% of global wealth, or $56.2 trillion.
Fastest growing number of billionaires (2000-23)
When it comes to wealth per adult, the world’s population has made great strides since the early 2000s: the proportion of adults with wealth over $1 million has tripled, from 0.5% to 1.5%.
Since 2000, Qatar has seen the largest increase in the number of billionaires, growing by 46 to 26,163. China has the second largest increase, increasing its number of billionaires by 39,000 to 6,013,282, followed by Kazakhstan (from 918 to 44,307).
“I think it’s important to recognize that, in general, wealth grows roughly in line with economic growth and also, vaguely, with rising asset prices,” Adams said.
“Emerging market economies like China, especially if you look back at the 2000s, were at a very different stage then, and Russia as well, tend to have more pronounced wealth growth in general, and also, for example, if there is a certain concentration in a particular growth sector, that helps. So in commodity exporting countries, including not only Russia but also some Middle Eastern countries, you tend to see very rapid wealth accumulation, especially among the top 10%, which supports the rise in billionaires.”
UBS said that over the 15 years it has been publishing the report, Asia-Pacific had the highest wealth growth, increasing by about 177 percent, followed by the Americas at about 146 percent, while Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) saw an increase of just 44 percent.
Highest percentage of millionaires
38% of the world’s billionaires live in the United States, 28% in Western Europe, and 10% in China.
At the national level, Switzerland has the highest proportion of millionaires, with 12 out of every 100 people having assets of over $1 million, followed by Hong Kong with eight out of every 100 millionaires, Australia (seven out of every 100), the Netherlands (seven out of every 100) and the United States (six out of every 100).
Check out the table below to see how billionaire wealth has changed in different countries.
