It’s a great time to be a billionaire
The super-rich are shattering records.
It could have easily been mistaken for an April Fool’s Day joke. Billionaires are worth “more than the GDP of every country in the world besides the US and China”, read Forbes in their annual update on the wealth of the world’s richest people. As of 1st April, billionaires were wealthier than ever before, “worth $16.1 trillion in total —up nearly $2 trillion over 2024”.
A lot can change in a week. President Trump’s use of tariffs as ‘a wrecking ball’ sent financial markets into a nosedive. We checked (9th April) how the 10 richest people have fared since Forbes calculated their annual list on 7 March, and their wealth has fallen by $189 billion or 12% over the last month. UPDATE: A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A DAY! THE MARKET RALLY ADDED $138BN BACK TO THE WEALTH OF THESE 10 MEN IN 24 HOURS.
Before you shed a tear, they’re still 5% richer compared to this time last year, despite the worst week for the financial markets since the pandemic – and we should all remember how that ended.
In this week’s bulletin, the team at Equals has dissected the details behind Forbes’ annual rich list.
Billionaire bonanza in numbers
Another record-shattering year by the world’s billionaires. For the first time since Forbes began its annual publication of billionaires, the number of billionaires has surpassed the 3,000 mark, and their wealth has hit the $16 trillion mark. There are now 3,028 billionaires, 247 more than last year. On average, a billionaire was created every 35 hours in 2024 or five per week. Their wealth increased by nearly $2 trillion to hit $16.1 trillion. That's a growth of $5.2 billion per day on average.
Putting it into context. A billion dollars is not a small sum. Imagine you spent $10,000 every day. If you started with a million dollars, it would be gone in 100 days. If you had a billion dollars, it would take 274 years to spend it all. If you had the average wealth of the 10 richest people ($182 billion), it wouldn’t be gone for 50,000 years!
An unprecedented surge. It took 32 years for the world's billionaires' wealth to hit $8 trillion. But it has taken just five years to double that wealth to $16 trillion. It took 30 years for the number of billionaires to hit 2,000, but only 8 years to hit more than 3,000. This is a clear sign of how an economic system based on greed is designed to concentrate wealth at an ever greater pace.
Billionaire wealth is concentrated in just a few countries. 80 countries and territories have at least one billionaire, but more than two-thirds of billionaire wealth ($11.1 trillion) is held in five countries. The US has by far the largest number of billionaires at 906, accounting for 30% of the world's billionaires. The total wealth of US billionaires is $6.82 trillion, equivalent to 42.4% of billionaire wealth globally.
Europe and Asia each account for about a quarter of billionaire wealth. Less than half (0.7%) of billionaire wealth is in Africa.
As we reported in January, extreme wealth is largely unearned and built on the back of colonialism.
Inequality among billionaires. There is a stark unequal wealth distribution among the billionaire class. There are now 15 centi-billionaires, three of whom have more than $200 billion each. The five richest billionaires have a combined net wealth of $1.1 trillion. The richest 100 billionaires hold more than a third of total billionaire wealth but account for only 3.3% of the billionaire population.
Governments can reverse wealth and power concentration. The world is facing extreme uncertainty and unpredictability. We are off track in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and extreme wealth inequality is a barrier to change. Governments can and must act by ensuring that the billionaires play by the rules and pay their fair share of taxes.
Something to read/listen to
Listen to the latest Equals podcast with Nobel Prize winner and MIT professor Simon Johnson on the effect of Artificial Intelligence on inequality.
Read Foreign Policy’s latest magazine on Billionaire Rule.
Subscribe to Inequality.org’s excellent newsletter.
Read this academic article about what people across the world think about inequality.
Read Stephen Valocchi’s book “Mapping Inequality in an Era of Neoliberalism”.
Read UNCTAD’s report on major inequality trends and policy challenges.
This one is a shocking statistic.
"It took 32 years for the world's billionaires' wealth to hit $8 trillion. But it has taken just five years to double that wealth to $16 trillion."