Global wealth in 2022: 1.1% of the adult population monopolizes almost 46% of wealth

According to the estimates of the fourteenth edition of the”World Wealth Report”, issued by the Swiss bank WUBS, global wealth is about 454,400 billion dollars at the end of 2022, a slight decline compared to 2021, in which it peaked at 465.700 billion dollars. Wealth per adult also decreased by USD 3,198 (-3.6%) to USD 84,718 at the end of 2022. A large part of this decline is due to the appreciation of the US dollar against many other currencies. If exchange rates had remained constant at the rates of 2021, total wealth would have increased by 3.4%, and wealth per adult by 2.2% in 2022.
The loss of global wealth was largely concentrated in North America and Europe, which together lost 10,900 billion dollars. China and the Asia-Pacific region also recorded losses totaling 3,500 billion dollars, but these losses were partially offset by minor gains in India and Africa.
In parallel with the decline in total wealth, overall wealth inequality also decreased in 2022, with the share of wealth of the richest 1% in the world falling to 44.5%. The number of US dollar millionaires worldwide decreased by 3.5 million in 2022 to reach 59.4 million people, before taking into account 4.4 million (inflation millionaires) who would no longer qualify if the millionaire threshold was adjusted to take into account inflation in 2022. In total, median wealth has quintupled during this century, at almost twice the rate of the wealth of every adult, largely due to the rapid growth of wealth in China.
The pyramid of wealth gives us a simplified picture of the social hierarchy. At the base, we find the category of low-net-worth people, less than 10 thousand dollars, whose number is estimated at 2.8 billion individuals, that is, 53% of all adults in the world, as they own only 1.2% of the world’s cake. The loyal category, which covers those whose wealth ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 US dollars, has experienced the largest increase this century, more than tripling in size and rising from 503 million in 2000 to 1.8 billion in mid-2022, that is, 34.3% of the population owns 13.6% of wealth. This reflects the growing prosperity in emerging economies, especially China, and the expansion of the middle class in developing countries. This middle class constitutes an essential economic lever and is the basis of the dynamism experienced by some emerging countries.
The size of the upper class, whose wealth ranges from 100 thousand dollars to a million dollars, has also tripled this century, and its number has moved from 208 million in 2000 to 642 million people in 2022. Members of this group currently have net assets totaling 178,900 billion dollars, which is 39.4% of the world’s wealth, and more than three times more than the adult population (12%).
And at the top of the pyramid we find the group of millionaires and billionaires. It is small in number, with 59.4 million people, or 1.1% of the total adult population, and large in wealth, with 45.8% of the wealth. It is worth noting that the total wealth possessed by this group of global millionaires has continued to increase in recent years. It has multiplied by 5 times during the period from 2000 to 2022, moving from 41,400 billion dollars to 208,300 billion dollars, while the total wealth has multiplied by only 3 times during this period.
Within this group, we distinguish between millionaires of the super-rich subgroup, which is called UHNWI for short (the individual with very high wealth), whose estimated number is 243,060 people with a wealth of more than 50 million dollars, and 7,020 people with more than 500 million dollars. The regional distribution of these wealthy people reveals the dominance of the United States with 51%, followed by China with 11%.
The report, available in English, is filled with the necessary data for in-depth analyzes by country and region. But this is hardly possible for the majority of countries due to the scarcity of data on wealth, which the authors of the report caution to highlight. Moreover, it is important to recall a certain number of methodological considerations that governed the preparation of this report. The wealth in question is therefore defined as the value of financial assets plus real assets (mainly real estate) that households own, minus their debts. This takes us away from the total wealth as defined in the Moroccan report on wealth. In addition, only wealth owned by adults is retained, with the exception of wealth owned by children which can be significant in some countries.
In any case, according to the forecasts set by the “World Wealth Report”, Global Wealth will increase by 38% over the next five years, reaching 629,000 billion dollars by 2027. Low-and middle-income countries are responsible for 56% of growth, accounting for only 31% of current growth. Growth in middle-income countries will be the main driver of global trends. It is also expected that the number of millionaires will increase significantly over the next five years to reach 86 million, while the number of high-net-worth people will reach 372 thousand, and the difference in this development between the wealth created (38%) and the number of millionaires (45%).