Number of millionaires worldwide triples in 20 years: report
June 18, 2020
The number of millionaires worldwide tripled in the last two decades, a study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released Thursday revealed.
More than 24 million people around the globe had personal wealth valuing $1 million (€891 million) or more at the end of 2019, according to BCG's 20th edition of its "Global Wealth Report," compared to 8.9 million people in 1999, nearly triple the number.
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The study looked at private financial wealth held in the form of cash and deposits, bonds, equities and investment fund shares, life insurance and pensions and other small assets.
In the last 20 years, total personal financial wealth globally also nearly tripled, climbing from $80 trillion in 1999 to $226 trillion at the end of 2019, the report said.
Collectively, millionaires worldwide commanded 50% of global wealth in 2019, it said.
Twice as many German millionaires
With 400,000 millionaires, Germany — Europe's largest economy — ranked seventh globally in terms of millionaires per country in 2019. The number of millionaires in Germany doubled in the last twenty years, the study showed.
Germany ranked third to only the US and China when it came to people with personal wealth valuing $100 million or more. Last year, 2,400 individuals in Germany fell into this bracket.
The vast majority of millionaires live in the US.
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Increase across all regions
All regions of the world saw a significant increase in the number of wealthy people over the last two decades, the study showed.
"In the last 20 years, we have never seen such uniform growth across the regions as in 2019," said author of the study Anna Zakrzewski.
The share of personal wealth held by developing economies — Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe — grew from a tenth to a quarter of global wealth in the last two decades, the report said.
In 2019, China alone had 29 times the number of people with personal wealth valuing over $100 million than it did in 1999.
kp/rt (dpa,Reuters)