The Number of Millionaires Has Skyrocketed

In its latest annual report, Swiss bank UBS reveals there has been a slight downtick in global wealth inequality, with the share of wealth held by the world's richest 1 percent falling to 44.5 percent in 2022, from 45.6 percent in 2021. Notably, the number of U.S. dollar millionaires worldwide has fallen by 3.5 million in 2022, to 59.4 million (based on global wealth).

As the study's authors note, this figure does not take into account the 4.4 million "inflation millionaires" who would no longer be eligible if this wealth threshold had been adjusted for inflation in 2022. "While inflation has eroded the real value of wealth this century (and made it easier for adults to become dollar millionaires), it has not greatly distorted the year-on-year wealth growth comparison, at least not until recently," they write.

As the following chart shows, the number of U.S. dollar millionaires has risen sharply since the beginning of the 21st century. In 2000, there were 14.7 million millionaires worldwide, a fourfold increase in twenty years (300 percent). If we compare this figure with the fight against extreme poverty, the number of people below the global poverty line - which today stands at $2.15 a day - has declined at a much slower rate. At the turn of the century, there were 1.7 billion people living in extreme poverty, compared with around 700 million today, a drop of around 60 percent.

The United States is home to by far the largest contingent of dollar millionaires: 22.7 million in 2022, representing 6.7 percent of the country's population. Next on this list is China with 6.2 million (0.4 percent of the population), while France completes the podium with 2.8 million (4.2 percent of the population).