Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Billionaires around the world - Statistics & Facts
A billionaire is a person whose wealth is worth at least one billion units of a given currency, usually a major currency such as U.S. dollar or Euro. In 2022, the highest geographical concentration of billionaires was in North America. However, China was the country with the biggest billionaire population worldwide, and its capital, Beijing, was the city with the most billionaires in the same year.
Wealth distribution
While there were a total of 3,194 billionaires worldwide in 2022, a high number of the world's population owns less than 10,000 U.S. dollars. As a result, nearly half of the world's wealth is owned by the richest percent, highlighting the issue of global inequality. Moreover, whereas Switzerland and the United States have the highest average wealth per adult, Luxembourg and Norway are the countries with the highest GDP per capita worldwide, underlining that a high presence of actual wealth does not necessarily mean a high level of wealth distribution. Looking at wealth distribution among the world's billionaires, 15 persons had fortunes of 50 billion U.S. dollars or more. However, billionaires with fortunes between two and five billion U.S. dollars had the highest combined wealth in 2021.Demographics of billionaires: A majority of older men
Most billionaires are self-made. However, there is a significant difference between male and female billionaires: Whereas a majority of the former were self-made, close to half of the latter had inherited their fortune. When taking a closer look at the demographics of billionaires globally, about 88 percent were men in 2022. Only about 10 percent of the billionaires worldwide were younger than 50 years old. As of April 2023, 18-year-old Clemente Del Vecchio was the youngest billionaire globally.Major billionaire industries
While this is not necessarily the industry from which the billionaires earn their fortune, nearly one fourth of the world's billionaires between 50 and 70 years devote most of their time to banking and financing. There are also differences between billionaires concerning from where the assets allocation; more than 60 percent of the wealth of billionaires below 50 years derived their wealth from public holdings, while the same was the case for around 40 percent of those above 50 years. In the period between April and July 2020, billionaires operating within industrials saw the highest increase of their wealth.
