Where Data Tells the Story
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More than 680,000 new people became millionaires in 2024, according to the latest annual report by Swiss bank UBS. In terms of percentage growth, the greatest increase was in Turkey, which saw an 8 percent rise in the number of millionaires year-on-year, followed by the United Arab Emirates, which saw an increase of 5.8 percent. Over the next five years, UBS analysts forecast North America and Greater China to be the main drivers of global wealth growth.
Meanwhile, there has been a mixed picture in the development of global wealth inequality over the past five years. According to the report, equality has risen in 26 of the 56 markets studied by UBS, while it has fallen in 29 and remained unchanged in one.
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 in the analyzed countries. In 2024, there were almost 60 million - 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 $3.00 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 808 million today, a drop of around 52 percent.
The United States is home to by far the largest contingent of dollar millionaires: 23.8 million in 2024, representing 7 percent of the country's population. Next on this list is China with 6.3 million (0.4 percent of the population), while France completes the podium with 2.9 million (4.2 percent of the population). China has seen millionaire numbers rise especially fast since 2000.
Millionaire numbers are projected to increase until 2028 in the vast majority of the 56 countries in UBS's sample. Two exceptions are the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In the latter country, there will be a projected 3.1 percent - or around 81,500 - fewer millionaires in 2028 than in 2024.