World's Highest Concentration of Millionaires

Boston Consulting has released its most recent Global Wealth Report and it has some information that is probably pretty surprising to most Americans. The report has statistics on where the highest concentrations of millionaires are located in the world. The surprising part for me was which country was on top... Singapore. In Singapore apparently 1 in 10 households have assets in excess of $1 million dollars. The list below has stats on what percentage of the population is worth more than $1 million in each of the top five countries:

1 — Singapore — 10.6%
2 — Qatar — 7.9%
3 — Switzerland — 7.3%
4 — United Arab Emirates — 6.6%
5 — Kuwait — 5.3%

If you are wondering, the U.S.A. ranks sixth at 4.3%...

Link: WSJ Wealth Report Blog
Image: DogFrog @ Flickr

Number of Millionares in World Increases 600k

Recent reports now say that the world now is home to over 10 million millionaires. (note: this millionaire club doesn't include real estate worth in its calculation). The year over year total grew 600k (about 6%) from 2006 to 2007. You might say, who cares? There are oh, 6.6 billion people on the planet -- so in the grand scheme of things its still tiny (somewhere around 1/5th of 1% of the population). The interesting thing about these new statistics is what has driven the increase in millionaires.

According to the report a steady combination of inflation and booming emerging economies has fueled the boom. The millionaire club has, unsurprisingly grown fastest in India and China. Those of us in America be warned. The United States is still home to 1 out of 3 millionaires, but it remains to be seen if the emerging markets around the world will be able to spread their new found wealth around enough to change those figures when the 2008 stats come out.

Image: Justin Vining