WHERE ARE THE WORLD’S MILLIONAIRES AND HOW IS WEALTH DIVIDED GLOBALLY?

Tue 30 July 2024:

The world has at least 58 million US dollar millionaires, accounting for 1.5 percent of the global adult population, according to the 2024 UBS Global Wealth Report (PDF), which sampled 56 markets that account for 92 percent of global wealth.

The United States has the highest number of millionaires, with some 21.95 million individuals having wealth in seven figures or more. China comes at a distant second with some 6.01 million millionaires, followed by the United Kingdom (3.06 million), France (2.87 million) and Japan (2.83 million).

UBS defines wealth as the value of financial assets and real assets minus debts held by a household.

Global wealth, in dollar terms, grew by 4.2 percent in 2023 after a decline of 3 percent in 2022, according to UBS.

“If you think of millionaires or the wealthy in general, there’s kind of an indigenous, core of millionaires that has a strong attachment to the country. Then there is a more mobile element that globally [is able to] fairly easily switch domiciles,” Samuel Adams, an economist at UBS, told Al Jazeera.

By 2028, the UK is expected to lose the most millionaires – nearly one in six of its millionaires will lose that status. The Netherlands is another country set to lose 4 percent of its millionaires by 2028.

“The point here with the Netherlands and the UK that we’re making is that both of these countries already have a lot of millionaires – they have a growing core. But then you have a very mobile [element] working around that. And it might be that, in the global competition for wealth, they could see some outflows of the more mobile element of the wealthy. Which doesn’t necessarily mean the economy isn’t working. There’s still wealth being created in those countries. It’s just that the people who are mobile might consider all the places that they want to domicile to.”

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How is wealth divided globally?

Almost half of the world’s wealth, 47.5 percent or $213 trillion, is held by just 1.5 percent of the global adult population, according to the Global Wealth Report. These are households that hold more than $1m.

In contrast, those with a wealth of less than $10,000 hold just 0.5 percent ($2.4 trillion) of global wealth, but make up 39.5 percent of the world’s adults.Households with a wealth of between $10,000 and $100,000, representing 42.7 percent of adults, account for 12.6 percent of global wealth or $56.2 trillion.

The fastest-growing millionaires (2000-23)

In terms of wealth per adult, the world’s population has made substantial progress since the beginning of the millennium. The percentage of adults whose wealth exceeds $1m tripled from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent.

Since 2000, Qatar saw the greatest increase in the number of millionaires, which rose from 46 to 26,163. China saw the second largest increase, from 39,000 to 6,013,282 millionaires, followed by Kazakhstan (918 to 44,307).

“I think it’s important to appreciate that in general, wealth grows kind of proportionate to economic growth, as well as kind of vaguely to asset price growth,” Adams said.

“Emerging market economies such as China, especially if we think back to the 2000s, which was in a very different stage, Russia equally, tend to see more wealth growth in general, and then it also helps if you have a certain concentration in a sector, for example, that sees particular growth. So commodity exporters – thinking of Russia, but also some Middle Eastern countries – tend to see very fast accumulation of wealth, particularly in the top 10 percent of the wealth bracket, which supports millionaire growth.”

UBS said over that the 15 years that it has published its report, the Asia Pacific region has posted the biggest growth in wealth, up almost 177 percent, followed by the Americas at nearly 146 percent, while Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was up just 44 percent.

The US hosts 38 percent of the world’s millionaires, Western Europe 28 percent and China 10 percent.

By country, in percentage terms, Switzerland has the highest share of millionaires, with 12 in every 100 people having a wealth of more than $1m. This is followed by Hong Kong, where eight in every 100 people are millionaires, Australia (seven in 100), the Netherlands (seven in 100) and the US (six in 100).