Over ** 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 **** million top one percent wealth holders globally. France followed in third.

Around 36 percent of the world's collected net personal wealth belongs to the richest one percent. The share of global wealth owned by the richest percent fell during the global financial crisis in 2008/2009, and has been fluctuating since. One-third of the world's billionaires reside in North America.

Graph and download economic data for Share of Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (99th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBST01134) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

The average for 2023 based on 196 countries was 0.51 percent. The highest value was in India: 17.91 percent and the lowest value was in Andorra: 0 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The massive wealth inequality in the world is underpinned by this chart: while just above *** percent of the world's population had fortunes of more than one million U.S. dollars in 2022, more than **** of the global population had a total wealth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars.

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.

With a net worth of 342 billion U.S. dollars, Elon Musk, the cofounder of seven companies, such as electric car maker Tesla and the rocket producer SpaceX, was the wealthiest man in the world in March 2025. The wealthiest people in the world Marc Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Meta Platforms, came second with a wealth of 235.6 billion U.S. dollars. Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos followed in third. All the 10 richest people in the world were men. Wealth distribution worldwide As of 2022, one percent of people held nearly half of the world's combined wealth. Moreover, 2.8 billion of the world's population hold a combined wealth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars, compared to 59 million people having a combined wealth of 1 billion dollars or more, underlining the vast inequalities around the world. Where do the most affluent people live? Most millionaires live in the United States, while Hong Konk was the city hosting the largest number of high net worth individuals worldwide. The country with the highest number of billionaires is China.

Graph and download economic data for Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLB50107) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

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.

The average for 2021 based on 121 countries was 22.26 percent. The highest value was in Canada: 82.74 percent and the lowest value was in Afghanistan: 0 percent. The indicator is available from 2011 to 2021. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Between December 2019 and 2021, the top one percent of earners accumulated 63 percent of all new wealth worldwide. This is more than six times more wealth than accumulated by the bottom 90 percent over the same time period.

Global wealth distribution Newly generated wealth landing in the hands of the few is not a new story and has been the focus of international development policy for many years. Looking at a regional level, Latin America was the region with the starkest distribution of wealth. In this region, 77 percent of the wealth was held by the richest 10 percent in 2021, and only 0.5 percent held by the poorest 50 percent. At an individual level, around 2.82 billion adults worldwide had a net worth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars in 2021.

Billionaires In 2021, the highest concentration of billionaires could be found in North America. However, China had the largest number of billionaires in its population in 2022, with most living in Beijing. Looking at wealth distribution amongst billionaires themselves, 20 people had fortunes of 50 billion U.S. dollars or more, but the majority of billionaires had a personal fortune between two and five billion U.S. dollars.

In December 2022, Elon Musk slipped from the top spot of richest people on Earth. The number one spot was taken by French magnate, Bernard Arnault of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

By 2030, the middle-class population in Asia-Pacific is expected to increase from 1.38 billion people in 2015 to 3.49 billion people. In comparison, the middle-class population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase from 114 million in 2015 to 212 million in 2030.

Worldwide wealth

While the middle-class has been on the rise, there is still a huge disparity in global wealth and income. The United States had the highest number of individuals belonging to the top one percent of wealth holders, and the value of global wealth is only expected to increase over the coming years. Around 57 percent of the world’s population had assets valued at less than 10,000 U.S. dollars; while less than one percent had assets of more than million U.S. dollars. Asia had the highest percentage of investable assets in the world in 2018, whereas Oceania had the highest percent of non-investable assets.

The middle-class

The middle class is the group of people whose income falls in the middle of the scale. China accounted for over half of the global population for middle-class wealth in 2017. In the United States, the debate about the middle class “disappearing” has been a popular topic due to the increase in wealth to the top billionaires in the nation. Due to this, there have been arguments to increase taxes on the rich to help support the middle-class.

We are living in an era of unprecedented wealth coupled with unprecedented inequality. Richest one percent of the global population owns the 82% of the wealth created in 2017.2 Sixty nine of the largest 100 economies in the world are corporations and 10 corporations are richer than 180 countries combined. This concentration of wealth is fuelled by an extractive economy that prioritises consumption, growth and profit over social and environmental good. Consequently, we are experiencing a climate crisis that threatens humanity and has the most catastrophic consequences for women in the global south. To address the structural problems of neoliberal globalisation, fundamentalism, and militarism and ecological crisis, we need to revive global solidarity through the form of solidarity strikes where social movements working around inequality, democracy, environmental justice, and human rights & women’s rights come together to disrupt the current order and make our demands for Development Justice. This publication has reviewed 40 politically significant strikes in the past in various parts of the world, and reflected on what lessons the peoples’ movements can take forward for future political actions.

In 2016, there were approximately **** thousand millionaires in Pakistan. The number of individuals owning one million U.S. dollars or more in Pakistan is expected to rise to **** thousand by 2026. HNWI forecast in Pakistan Individuals with investible assets of at least one million U.S. dollars in current exchange rate terms are considered high net worth. The number of high-net-worth individuals in Pakistan is expected to rise overall between 2022 and 2028, settling at just under ***** thousand individuals. Countries with the highest millionaire rate In 2021, Switzerland had the highest rate of millionaires in the world, with **** percent of the adult population owning assets worth more than one million U.S. dollars. Luxembourg came in second, with **** percent of the population being millionaires, and Iceland came in third. Furthermore, over ** million people in the United States were among the world's top one percent of ultra-high net-worth individuals in 2021. China came second, with over **** million top one percent wealth holders worldwide.

As of March 2025, Alice Walton was ranked the richest woman with over 97 billion U.S. dollars in net worth. By comparison, the richest man in the world had a fortune of over 328 billion dollars as of March 2025. The philanthropy of MacKenzie Scott MacKenzie Scott has become well known in the world of philanthropy for providing billions to thousands of non-profit organizations. Globally, the United States has the most philanthropic outflows out of any nation, reaching nearly 49 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. By comparison, the country with the second highest philanthropic outflows, the United Kingdom, reached nearly 5.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Across the United States, basic needs, religious and spiritual causes, and healthcare are the sectors affluent individuals have given the most. Wealth in the United States Out of each country, the United States has the most people within the top one percent of ultra-high-net-worth individuals globally, with 21 million residents belonging to this group. By comparison, China ranked second with over five million belonging to the top one percent of ultra-high net worth individuals. Regionally, North America has the most billionaires, reaching over 1,100 followed by Europe and Asia.

As of February 2025, 5.56 billion individuals worldwide were internet users, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent of the world's population, were social media users. Global internet usage Connecting billions of people worldwide, the internet is a core pillar of the modern information society. Northern Europe ranked first among worldwide regions by the share of the population using the internet in 20254. In The Netherlands, Norway and Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the population used the internet as of February 2025. North Korea was at the opposite end of the spectrum, with virtually no internet usage penetration among the general population, ranking last worldwide. Eastern Asia was home to the largest number of online users worldwide – over 1.34 billion at the latest count. Southern Asia ranked second, with around 1.2 billion internet users. China, India, and the United States rank ahead of other countries worldwide by the number of internet users. Worldwide internet user demographics As of 2024, the share of female internet users worldwide was 65 percent, five percent less than that of men. Gender disparity in internet usage was bigger in African countries, with around a ten percent difference. Worldwide regions, like the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe, showed a smaller usage gap between these two genders. As of 2024, global internet usage was higher among individuals between 15 and 24 years old across all regions, with young people in Europe representing the most significant usage penetration, 98 percent. In comparison, the worldwide average for the age group 15–24 years was 79 percent. The income level of the countries was also an essential factor for internet access, as 93 percent of the population of the countries with high income reportedly used the internet, as opposed to only 27 percent of the low-income markets.

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.

Whereas less than one percent of the population in high income countries in the world lived on less than 2.15 U.S. dollars a day in 2018 in terms of 2017 purchasing power parities, 44 percent of the population in low income countries did the same. On a more positive note, the poverty rate in low income countries fell by 20 percentage points from 1994 to 2018.

As of March 2025, Google represented 79.1 percent of the global online search engine market on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents the lowest share ever recorded by the search engine in these devices for over two decades. Meanwhile, its long-time competitor Bing accounted for 12.21 percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over 2.9 percent each. Google and the global search market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2024, with a market capitalization of 2.02 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2024 with roughly 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over 33 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 21 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2025, the United States housed the highest number of billionaires worldwide in 2025. In detail, there were *** billionaires living in the United States as of January that year. By comparison, *** billionaires resided in China. India, the United Kingdom, and Germany were also the homes of a significant number of billionaires that year. United States has regained its first place As the founder and exporter of consumer capitalism, it is no surprise that the United States is home to a large number of billionaires. Although China had briefly overtaken the U.S. in recent years, the United States has reclaimed its position as the country with the most billionaires in the world. Moreover, North America leads the way in terms of the highest number of ultra high net worth individuals – those with a net worth of more than ***** million U.S. dollars. The prominence of Europe and North America is a reflection of the higher degree of economic development in those states. However, this may also change as China and other emerging economies continue developing. Female billionaires Moreover, the small proportion of female billionaires does little to counter critics claiming the global economy is dominated by an elite comprised mainly of men. On the list of the 20 richest people in the world, only one was a woman. Moreover, recent political discourse has put a great amount of attention on the wealth held by the super-rich with the wealth distribution of the global population being heavily unequal.