In 2023, by far the highest number of individuals with net assets of at least 30 million U.S. dollars worldwide were residing in North America, reaching over 250,000 people. Asia recorded the second highest number of UHNWIs in the world with over 165,000 individuals.A small share owns vast sums of wealthThe vast majority of global wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people. Only one percent of the global population owns assets worth more than one million U.S. dollars. The richest people in the world are Elon Mask, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault. When it comes to women, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers led the ranking of the most affluent women worldwide. The wealth of over 70 percent of UHNWIs was self-made. Where UHNWIs live and where they leave Unsurprisingly, as North America is the world region with the highest number of UHNWIs, the United States is the country with the highest UHNWI count. However, Hong Kong, special administrative (SAR) region in China, is the city with the highest number of UHNWIs. Nevertheless, China was the country that recorded the highest outflux of UHNWIs in 2022.

As of 2019, 84 percent of millionaires in the United States had a net worth of between one million and two and a half million U.S. dollars. On the other end of the scale, 0.01 percent of millionaires had a net worth of over 500 million U.S. dollars.

In 2023, roughly 1.49 billion adults worldwide had a net worth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars. By comparison, 58 million adults had a net worth of more than one million U.S. dollars in the same year. Wealth distribution The distribution of wealth is an indicator of economic inequality. The United Nations says that wealth includes the sum of natural, human, and physical assets. Wealth is not synonymous with income, however, because having a large income can be depleted if one has significant expenses. In 2023, nearly 1,700 billionaires had a total wealth between one to two billion U.S. dollars. Wealth worldwide China had the highest number of billionaires in 2023, with the United States following behind. That same year, New York had the most billionaires worldwide.

New Jersey has the highest rate of millionaires, with 9.76% of households showing a net worth of $1 million or above. That means that 246,058 New Jersey households are millionaires.

Graph and download economic data for Net Worth Held by the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLTP1246) from Q3 1989 to Q4 2024 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

Data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report shows that in 2023 there were just under 30 million millionaires in the US.

Research done by the Credit Suisse Research Institute states that the country with the highest number of millionaires is the U.S., with nearly 30 million millionaires and 17 million people with wealth up to $5 million! To put numbers in perspective, China, Japan, Germany, the U.K., and France, added together, have a total of 17 million millionaires!

Over 21 million individuals residing in the United States belonged to the global top one percent of ultra high net worth individuals worldwide in 2022. China ranked second, with over five million top one percent wealth holders globally. France followed in third.

In 2023, there were nearly 22 million people with a net worth of over one million U.S. dollars in the United States, which put the country on the top of the ranking. China was ranked second in that year, with more than six million individuals with wealth exceeding one million U.S. dollars. The United Kingdom followed in third with around three million millionaires.

In the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth. Income inequality in the U.S. Despite the idea that the United States is a country where hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will inevitably lead to success, this is often not the case. In 2023, 7.4 percent of U.S. households had an annual income under 15,000 U.S. dollars. With such a small percentage of people in the United States owning such a vast majority of the country’s wealth, the gap between the rich and poor in America remains stark. The top one percent The United States follows closely behind China as the country with the most billionaires in the world. Elon Musk alone held around 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Over the past 50 years, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio has exploded, causing the gap between rich and poor to grow, with some economists theorizing that this gap is the largest it has been since right before the Great Depression.

In 2023, 225,000 individuals with net assets of at least 30 million U.S. dollars were residing in the United States, by far the highest number of any country. By comparison, China, which had the second highest number of ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs), had less than 100,000 individuals with assets amounting to 30 million U.S. dollars or more.Place of residence of ultra high net worth individuals The residency of almost half of the world’s ultra high net worth individuals in the United States explains the dominance of North America in regard to the number of ultra high net worth individuals by region. Hong Kong was the city with the most UHNWIs in 2022, followed by New York, London, and Los Angeles. Source of wealth and gender differences A majority of the world's UHNWIs are self-made. However, looking at billionaires, there is a clear difference between men and women; whereas a majority of billionaire men were self-made, a majority of the women had inherited their fortune.

The largest share of assets held by high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in North America in 2024 was cash and cash equivalents, which accounted for 24 percent of the total assets held by HNWIs in the United States and Canada that year. North America is the region with both the highest assets of HNWIs, and with the highest number of HNWIs. Who is considered a HNWI? To be considered a HNWI, their financial assets must exceed at least one million U.S. dollars. In addition to HNWIs, the term ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) refer to individuals with financial assets of at least 30 million U.S. dollars. The highest number of UHNWIs in the world are also found in North America, with more than 190,000 individuals. How many HNWIs are there in the U.S.? Most of the leading position of North America in terms of number and assets of HNWIs and UHNWIs is attributed to the United States. The number of UHNWIs in the United States reaches almost 110,900 individuals, which is almost four times as many as in China, the country with the second highest number of UHNWIs.

As of June 2024, Elon Musk was estimated as the wealthiest person in the United States with a net worth of around 195 billion dollars. Richest people in the United States - additional information Every year since 1982, the American business magazine Forbes has been compiling lists of the 400 richest people in the United States, known as the “Forbes 400.” In addition to that, since 1987, the publication has also been compiling a ranking of the 500 richest people in the world (excluding royalty and dictators), as well as more specialized tops, such as “World's Most Powerful Women,” “America's Richest Families,” “Most Valuable Brands” or “30 Under 30,” which focuses on young entrepreneurs from various fields which have gained millions in the past year by the use of social media, technical innovations and generally new and fresh approaches to business.

A multi-millionaire is defined as someone owning 10 million U.S. dollars or more. It was forecasted that there would be almost 18 thousand individuals in Australia defined as multi-millionaires by 2026. This is in line with the country’s growing economy over the years as well as the growing wealth inequality that was becoming a cause for concern in the island nation.

Distribution of the wealthy

As a rich country with plenty of natural resources and a high Human Development Index, Australia had always had a large number of high net-worth individuals or HNWIs. There were over ten thousand millionaires including a couple dozen of billionaires, with these figures expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

Income inequality

Despite the increase of wealth and economic growth, there was a concern at the level of poverty and homelessness due to the rising wealth inequality nationally. The number of homeless people living in Australia had only been increasing with more than a hundred thousand people currently without shelter. Furthermore, most of the wealth was being pushed from the country to the cities, affecting the livelihood of those living in the countryside or outback.

This statistic presents the American states with highest ratio of millionaire households per capita in 2020. In that year, New Jersey had the highest ratio of millionaire households per capita in the country, with 9.76 percent of households holding over one million U.S. dollars in assets.

In 2021, the population with high and ultra-high net worth in Russia increased relative to the previous year, measuring at approximately 311.9 thousand and 6.2 thousand individuals, respectively, For 2026, the estimates forecast a further increase.

Average income in Russia

The average per capita monthly income in Russia has been gradually increasing, estimated at nearly 39.9 thousand Russian rubles in 2021. The largest share, or over one quarter of the employed population, earned between 27 thousand and 45 thousand Russian rubles per month in 2021.

Russia’s super rich

Less than six percent of Russians had a monthly income of over 100 thousand Russian rubles in 2021. Among them were members of the Bakalchuk family, the richest in the country by total compound assets. The total wealth of its members, who managed the e-commerce company Wildberries, was estimated at 13.1 billion U.S. dollars as of July 2021. To compare, the total declared income of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin was reported at about 10 million Russian rubles in 2020.

In 2022, about 40 percent of adults in Mexico held a net worth under 10,000 U.S. dollars. In contrast, merely 393,000 Mexicans (that is, 0.4 percent of the total) had a net worth of over one million U.S. dollars. Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America regarding wealth distribution, with 78.7 percent of the national wealth held by the richest ten percent of the population.

The minimum salaryThe minimum wage per day guaranteed by law in Mexico was decreed to increase by 22 percent between 2021 and 2022, reaching 172.87 Mexican pesos in 2022. In the Free Zone located near the northern border the minimum daily wage was raised to 260.34 Mexican pesos.This represented the fourth consecutive incrase since 2019, but could prove to be insufficient to maintain the wellbeing of Mexican workers after the soaring inflation rate registered in 2022 and the economic impact of the COVID-19 in Mexican households. The legal minimum salary has a long history in the North American country, it was first implemented with the approval of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States in 1917. Income inequality in Latin AmericaLatin America, as other developing regions in the world, generally records high rates of inequality, with a Gini coefficient ranging between 38 and 54 among the region’s countries. Moreover, many of the countries with the biggest inequality in income distribution worldwide are found in Latin America. According to the Human Development Report 2019, wealth redistribution by means of tax transfers improves Latin America's Gini coefficient to a lesser degree than it does in advanced economies. Wider access to education and health services, on the other hand, have been proven to have a greater direct effect in improving Gini coefficient measurements in the region.

In 2016, around 15.2 percent of all White families in the United States had a net worth of one million U.S. dollars or more. This compares to only 1.9 percent of Black families.

In 2023, an estimate of 27.8 million Colombian adults had a net worth of less than 10 thousand U.S. dollars. In contrast, the total net assets of approximately 38 thousand people above 18 years old in the South American country surpassed one million dollars. Colombia is among the most unequal countries in Latin America.

In 2022, there were close to 2.6 million high net worth individuals (HNWI) with a net worth of one to five million U.S. dollars in Japan, compared to 77 individuals with a net worth of over 500 million dollars. Japan has a population of 125.85 million.