Where Do the World’s Wealthiest People Live ?
January 11, 2024 visual Capitalist
From UBS and Credit Suisse’s comprehensive Global Wealth Report 2023, we visualize the world’s millionaire population by country. Their databook details the sources they used, including household balance sheet data from the World Bank, the World Income Inequality Database, surveys, tax data, and Forbes’ findings.
UBS defines millionaires as individuals whose total wealth (including financial and non-financial assets, minus household debt) is at or above $1 million, using “smoothed exchange rates.” These are 2021 average currency exchange rates with the U.S. dollar, adjusted for inflation differences between the U.S. and concerned country, but not adjusted for U.S. inflation between 2021 and 2022.
The U.S. is home to nearly 23M millionaires, 40% of the total millionaire population in the world. Six American cities feature in the world’s wealthiest cities, led by New York City, home to 340,000 millionaires.
As it happens, this quantity is actually lower than the 24M American millionaires in 2021, as average wealth in the category fell due to a decline in the value of financial assets.
The world’s second-largest economy, China, is also home to the second-highest number of wealthy individuals, at 6M, about 10% of the total millionaire population. The number of Chinese residents with more than $1 million has grown rapidly since 2012, especially in economic hotspots like Hangzhou and Shenzhen.
At third and fourth, France and Japan essentially have the same number of millionaires (2.8M) as do Germany and the UK who round out the top six with 2.6M millionaires each.
The top 10 countries with the most millionaires are the 10 largest economies in the world, with the exception of India (ranked 14th) and Brazil, which is outside the top millionaire residents ranks, but grew its millionaire population by 122,000 between 2021 and 2022.
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