Israel has 131,000 people with $1 million or more in wealth each, according to Credit Suisse Research Institute's Global household wealth report published yesterday in Zurich. Israel is last among a list of 23 countries in the number of millionaires in absolute terms, but fifth in the world in the number of millionaires relative to the size of its population, after the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Norway, and Portugal.
The report analyzes household wealth as of mid-2019 according to net asset value, after deducting debt. According to the report, global wealth grew 2.6% to $360 trillion in the past year. Wealth per capita increased 1.2% since mid-2018, reaching $70,850.
The US led the world with 18,614,000 millionaires, far ahead of China in second place with 4,447,000 millionaires. At the same time, China is projected to narrow the gap in the coming years. According to Credit Suisse's forecast, the number of millionaires in China will grow 55% by 2024, while the number of millionaires in the US will grow 23%. The number of millionaires in Israel is projected to grow 32% by 2024 to 173,000.
Third on the list of millionaires is Japan with 3,025,000 millionaires, where the number of millionaires is projected to rise 71% by 2024, probably. For the first time, the number of Chinese in the top 10% in wealth outnumbered the number of people in the US: 100 million in China and 99 million in the US.
The number of millionaires worldwide increased 1.1 million to 46.8 million in the first half of 2019. 675,000, over half of the new millionaires, were in the US. The weakness of the Australian dollar against the US dollar, on the other hand, reduced the number of Australian millionaires by 124,000 in US dollar terms. The number of millionaires also fell in the UK (by 27,000) and Turkey (by 24,000) in dollar terms.
The wealthiest part of the globe is North America, with assets worth $114.6 trillion, followed by Europe with $90.7 trillion, the Asian Pacific region (excluding China) with $64.7 trillion, and China with $63.8 trillion.
The number of households worldwide with $100 million or more in net wealth is 55,920, and the number with $500 million or more in net wealth is 4,830.
An analysis of the lower income groups shows that 2.9 billion people, constituting 57% of the world's population, have less than $10,000 each in wealth. The number of people with $10,000-$100,000 in wealth each increased the most, tripling in size since 2000 from 514 million to 1.7 billion as of mid-2019. This is a result of prosperity in the emerging economies, especially China, and a trend towards expansion in the middle class in the developing world. The average per capita wealth in this group is $33,530, just under half of global per capita wealth, but substantially more than the average wealth in the countries, in which most of the people in this group live.
Economist Anthony Shorrocks, one of the report's authors, states, "Global wealth grew by a very moderate 2.6% rate over the past year. This low growth is attributable, among other things, to the devaluation of currencies against the US dollar. An analysis of the five-year average exchange rates against the dollar shows a 5.9% increase starting at the end of 2017, and wealth per person rose by 3.8%."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 22, 2019
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