![Global Wealth Distribution 2020 (Property)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Global_Wealth_Distribution_2020_%28Property%29.svg)
A millionaire is an individual whose
net worth
Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Since financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, net ...
or
wealth
Wealth is the abundance of Value (economics), valuable financial assets or property, physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for financial transaction, transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the ...
is equal to or exceeds one
million
One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian ''millione'' (''milione'' in modern Italian), from ''mille'', "thousand", plus the au ...
units of
currency
A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins.
A more general def ...
. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire. In countries that use the
short scale
The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer power of 10, powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.
For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one m ...
number naming system, a
billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...
is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros or the currency of the given country.
Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past
inflation
In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reductio ...
. It is obviously much easier and less significant to be a millionaire in those currencies, thus a millionaire (in the local currency) in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. A millionaire in
Zimbabwe in 2007 could have been extremely poor. Because of this, the term 'millionaire' generally refers to those whose assets total at least one million units of a high-value currency, such as the
United States dollar
The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...
,
Euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
, or
Pound Sterling
Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and t ...
.
, there were estimated to be just over 15 million millionaires in the world according to the Global Citizens Report by
Henley & Partners
Henley & Partners is an investment migration consultancy based in London. The company also advises governments on residence and citizenship-by-investment policy and works with them to develop and implement residence and citizenship programs. It ...
. The United States had the highest number of millionaires (5,325,000) of any country, whilst New York is the wealthiest city with 345,000 millionaires.
Terminology
The word "millionaire" was apparently coined in French in 1719 to describe speculators in the
Mississippi Bubble who earned millions of
livres in weeks before the bubble burst.
(The standard French spelling is now , though the earliest reference uses a single ''n''.
) The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli.
Earlier English writers also mention the French word, including Sir
William Mildmay
There have been two baronetcies created for persons with the surname Mildmay, one in the Baronetage of England and one in the Baronetage of Great Britain. Both are extinct.
The Mildmay Baronetcy, of Moulsham in the County of Essex, was created i ...
in 1764. The OED's first print citation is
Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation o ...
's 1826 novel ''
Vivian Grey
''Vivian Grey'' is Benjamin Disraeli's first novel, published by Henry Colburn in 1826. Originally published anonymously, ostensibly by a so-called "man of fashion", part 1 caused a considerable sensation in London society. Contemporary reviewe ...
'',
The
anglicisation
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...
''millionary'' was used in 1786 by
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary".
While statistics regarding financial assets and net worth are presented by household, the term is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. That is, even though the term statistically refers only to households, common usage is often in reference only to an individual.
Net worth vs. financial assets
There are multiple approaches to determining a person's status as a millionaire. One of the two most commonly used measurements is net worth, which counts the total value of all property owned by a household minus the household's debts. According to this definition, a household owning an $800,000 home, $50,000 of furnishings, two cars worth $60,000, a $60,000 retirement savings account, $45,000 in
mutual fund
A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV i ...
s, and a $325,000 vacation home with a $250,000 mortgage, $40,000 in car loans, and $25,000 in credit card debt would be worth about $1,025,000; and every individual in this household would thus be a millionaire. However, according to the net financial assets measurement used for some specific applications (such as evaluating an investor's expected tolerance for risk for stockbroker ethics), equity in one's principal residence is excluded, as are lifestyle assets, such as the car and furniture. Therefore, the above example household would only have net financial assets of $115,000. Another term used is "net investable assets" or
working capital
Working capital (WC) is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business, organisation, or other entity, including governmental entities. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is consi ...
. These practitioners may use the term "millionaire" to mean somebody who is free to invest a million units of currency through them as broker. For similar reasons, those who market goods, services and investments to
HNWI
High-net-worth individual (HNWI) is a term used by some segments of the financial services industry to designate persons whose investible wealth (assets such as stocks and bond (finance), bonds) exceeds a given amount. Typically, these individu ...
s are careful to specify a net worth "not counting principal residence". At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the United States,
while at the same time there were 11 million millionaires
in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households,
including those 5.1 million HNWIs.
In the
real estate bubble
A real-estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real-estate markets, and typically follow a land boom. A land boom is the rapid increase ...
up to 2007, average house prices in some U.S. regions exceeded $1 million, but many homeowners owed large amounts to banks holding mortgages on their homes. For this reason, there are many people in million-dollar homes whose net worth is far short of a million—in some cases, the net worth is actually negative.
Influence
While millionaires constitute only a small percentage of the population, they hold substantial control over economic resources, with the most powerful and prominent individuals usually ranking among them. The total amount of money held by millionaires can equal the amount of money held by a far higher number of poor people. The
Gini coefficient, and other measures in economics, estimated for each country, are useful for determining how many of the poorest people have the equivalent total wealth of the few richest in the country. ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' and ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'' magazines maintain lists of people based on their net worth and are generally considered authorities on the subject. ''Forbes'' listed 1,645 dollar billionaires in 2014, with an aggregate net worth of $6.4
trillion
''Trillion'' is a number with two distinct definitions:
* 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English.
* 1,000,000,000,0 ...
, an increase from $5.4 trillion the previous year.
(see
US-dollar billionaires in the world).
Sixteen percent of millionaires inherited their fortunes. Forty-seven percent of millionaires are business owners. Twenty-three percent of the world's millionaires got that way through paid work, consisting mostly of skilled professionals or managers. Millionaires are, on average, 61 years old with $3.05 million in assets.
Historical worth
Depending on how it is calculated, a million US dollars in 1900 is equivalent to $ (in ).
* $24.8 million using the
consumer price index
A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time.
Overview
A CPI is a statistica ...
,
* $61.4 million using the gold price
Thus one would need to have almost thirty million dollars today to have the
purchasing power of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than 100 million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy.
Multimillionaire
Dated ways of describing someone worth ''n'' millions are "''n''-fold millionaire" and "millionaire ''n'' times over". Still commonly used is ''multimillionaire'', which refers to individuals with net assets of 2 million or more of a currency. There are approximately 584,000 US$ multimillionaires who have net assets of $10M+ worldwide in 2017.
Roughly 1.5% of US$ millionaires are "ultra-high-net-worth individuals" (ultra-HNWIs), defined as those with a net worth or wealth of $30 million or more. There are approximately 226,000 ultra-HNWIs in the world in 2017, according to Wealth-X.
The rising prevalence of people possessing ever increasing quantities of wealth has given rise to additional terms to further differentiate millionaires. Individuals with net assets of 100 million or more of a currency are commonly termed ''centimillionaires,'' or more rarely ''hectomillionaires''.
HNWI population
![Number of Millionaires](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Number_of_Millionaires.gif)
High-net-worth individual
High-net-worth individual (HNWI) is a term used by some segments of the financial services industry to designate persons whose investible wealth (assets such as stocks and bonds) exceeds a given amount. Typically, these individuals are defined ...
s (those with financial assets, not including the residence, greater than a million US dollars).
Global cities with the most super-wealthy millionaires per capita (higher than $30 million)
According to wealth research group Wealth-X that released its latest
UHNW Cities report, showing the residential footprint of the world's top ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individual cities.
Excluding
Monaco
Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...
– which has very high UHNWI density –
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
has the highest density of super-wealthy people per capita in the world. The city is known as the most compact
metropolitan area
A metropolitan area or metro is a region that consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metro area usually com ...
, and also enjoys a concentration of affluence.
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
has the second-highest concentration, followed by
San Jose, the center of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
, and the largest city in Northern California.
While
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
leads in terms of overall UHNW footprint,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
has a similar number of UHNW "second homers" despite a considerably smaller population.
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
features as the second-highest European city, after London, Wealth-X said.
Among suburbs and smaller towns,
Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Bev ...
has the highest overall number of UHNW residents, and
Aspen
Aspen is a common name for certain tree species; some, but not all, are classified by botanists in the section ''Populus'', of the ''Populus'' genus.
Species
These species are called aspens:
*'' Populus adenopoda'' – Chinese aspen (China ...
has the highest concentration on a per capita basis, the report showed.
Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined by Wealth-X as those whose total net worth is higher than $30 million (
R400 million).
Number of UHNWIs per country
The following is a list of the countries with the most Ultra high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) as of November 2019 as per the 2020 Knight Frank's Wealth Report.
Countries by number and percentage of millionaires
* indicates "Economy of COUNTRY or TERRITORY" links.
Number of millionaires by city
, New York is the wealthiest city in the world with 345,000 HNWIs according to the Global Citizens Report by
Henley & Partners
Henley & Partners is an investment migration consultancy based in London. The company also advises governments on residence and citizenship-by-investment policy and works with them to develop and implement residence and citizenship programs. It ...
.
Cities with the highest concentration of millionaires
Disparity in United States
There is a wide disparity in the estimates of the number of millionaires residing in the United States.
A quarterly report prepared by the
Economist Intelligence Unit
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, ...
on behalf of
Barclays Wealth
Barclays Wealth Management serves affluent and high net worth clients through offices across the UK, offering personalised banking, credit, investment management and wealth planning services.
Reported client assets were £202.8 billion (as ...
in 2007 estimated that there were 16.6 million millionaires in the US. At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the US,
while at the same time, there were 11 million millionaires
in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households,
including those 5.1 million HNWIs.
According to
TNS Financial Services, as reported by CNN Money, 2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005. According to TNS, in mid-2006 the number of millionaire US households was 9.3 million, with an increase of half a million since 2005.
[TNS :: TNS Reports Record Breaking Number of Millionaires in the USA](_blank)
. Tnsglobal.com. Retrieved on 2011-11-23. The study found that half of all millionaire households in the US were headed by retirees. In 2004 the United States saw a "33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria [sic] in 2003", fueled largely by the country's real estate boom.
A report by
Capgemini for
Merrill Lynch
Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...
on the other hand stated that in 2007 there were approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who held at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding
collectibles
A collectable (collectible or collector's item) is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector. Collectable items are not necessarily monetarily valuable or uncommon. There are numerous types of collectables and terms t ...
,
consumables,
consumer durables
In economics, a durable good or a hard good or consumer durable is a good that does not quickly wear out or, more specifically, one that yields utility over time rather than being completely consumed in one use. Items like bricks could be consid ...
and primary residences.
According to TNS Financial Services,
Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...
, had the highest number of millionaires,
totalling over 262,800 households in mid-2006.
See also
*
Aggregate demand
In macroeconomics, aggregate demand (AD) or domestic final demand (DFD) is the total demand for final goods and services in an economy at a given time. It is often called effective demand, though at other times this term is distinguished. This is ...
*
Billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...
*
Business oligarch
A business oligarch is generally a business magnate who controls sufficient resources to influence national politics. A business leader can be considered an oligarch if the following conditions are satisfied:
# uses monopolistic tactics to domina ...
*
Distribution of wealth
The distribution of wealth is a comparison of the wealth of various members or groups in a society. It shows one aspect of economic inequality or economic heterogeneity.
The distribution of wealth differs from the income distribution in that ...
*
High-net-worth individual
High-net-worth individual (HNWI) is a term used by some segments of the financial services industry to designate persons whose investible wealth (assets such as stocks and bonds) exceeds a given amount. Typically, these individuals are defined ...
*
Upper middle class
*
Upper class
*
Six figure income
Affluence refers to an individual's or household's economical and financial advantage in comparison to others. It may be assessed through either income or wealth.
In absolute terms affluence is a relatively widespread phenomenon in the United ...
*
Wealth concentration
*''
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' (game show)
*''
The Millionaire Next Door'' (book)
*
Moscow Millionaire Fair
*
Pierre Lorillard II
Pierre Abraham Lorillard II or Peter Abraham Lorillard II (September 7, 1764 – May 23, 1843), also known as Peter Lorillard, Jr., was an American tobacco manufacturer, industrialist, banker, businessman, and real estate tycoon.
Early life
Lo ...
(first
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
to be designated a "millionaire")
*
List of African millionaires
*
Lists of billionaires
By nationality
* List of Argentines by net worth
* List of Americans by net worth
**List of richest Americans in history
* List of Australians by net worth
** ''Financial Review'' Rich List
* List of Austrians by net worth
* List of Belgians by ...
*
Sunday Times Rich List
The ''Sunday Times Rich List'' is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom ranked by net wealth. The list is updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday news ...
References
{{Authority control
Distribution of wealth