Globally…
- 2,660 billionaires comprise $13.76 trillion in wealth,
- 183,000 multimillionaires with $50 to $999,999,999 million each comprise $36.4 trillion in wealth,
- 3.6 million multimillionaires with $5 to $49 million each comprise $75.3 trillion (Patriotic Millionaires, 2022).
These numbers include data from 66 countries but, keep in in mind, there are 195 countries (Worldometer, 2022). I did not dig deep enough to say for certain, but suspect wealth was only measured for 66 countries instead of all 195 because the amount of individuals who fall into one of the three wealth categories above is probably negligible or immeasurable.
The total wealth of these 3,785,660 individuals is $125.46 trillion. The total net wealth of the entire world is $431 trillion (Forbes, 2021). The total population of the world is approximately 7,945,914,950 billion (Worldometer, 2022). Therefore, .000476% of the world's population control 29.11% of the world's financial wealth and real assets.
Per Credit Suisse (2021), there is another…
- 49,083,510 individuals worth $1 to $5 million each, although they do not identify the total amount of wealth comprised by this group of millionaires.
Erring on the side of caution though, let's assume the average wealth held by each of these lowlier millionaires is $1.5 million, so $73.63 trillion in wealth total. Putting it all together, the population and wealth of these lowlier millionaires combined with the three groups discussed earlier equates to 52,869,170 people with $198.63 trillion in wealth, suggesting that approximately .0067% or 6.7 tenths of one percent of the world's population owns 46.1% of the world's financial wealth and real assets.
In my opinion, this breakdown of wealth is more concerning because it is evidence that a sturdy financial system and human infrastructure exists to safeguard the way things are now. I'm not saying all millionaires and billionaires are bad or evil people, nor am I insinuating that exorbitant wealth concentration is defensible. Just throwing out some numbers to support discussion.
Edit 1: Fixed spelling, grammar, unnecessary words.