The Geography of the World's Richest People - Vivid Maps (2024)

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The number of billionaires on Forbes’ annual list of the world’s wealthiest people during the second pandemic year exploded to an outstanding 2,755. It is 660 more than a year ago. Of those, a record high of 493 was new for 2021 (every new billionaire appeared every 17 hours); 210 were from China and Hong Kong.

Overall, world billionaires are worth $13.1 trillion. The United States still has the most, with 724, pursued by China with 698.

Top 10 countries by number of billionaires

Most of the world’s wealthiest people live in only ten cities globally, with more than 10 percent living in just four Chinese metropolises. For the first time in seven years, New York City lost its first-place ranking as Beijing registered a net gain of 33 new billionaires (115 billionaires were living in New York City in 2016). The Chinese capital is now dwelling to 100 billionaires, slightly surpassing New York City’s 99.

Top 10 cities by number of billionaires

When it comes to millionaires, London tops the list. According to Knight Frank’s 2021 Wealth Report, 874,354 Londoners have assets worth more than $1 million compared with 820,000 in New York City.

According to the World Inequality Lab, in totality, there are 62,165,160 people worldwide worth $1 million or more and 2,750 billionaires in the world. Most millionaires live in North America, while more billionaires live in Asia.

The proportion of the world’s billionaires and millionaires by region

Microsoft founder Bill Gates had topped the list of wealthiest people for 18 years until 2019, losing first place to Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos remained the richest man for 3 years, giving way to Elon Musk as the richest man in the world in 2022.

More than half of the top 100 reaches people began by laboring for another company, and of those, the first job that guided to creating the most billionaires was the salesperson. That was closely pursued by a stock trader, software developer, engineer, analyst, and accountant.

Top 100 richest people on the planet

As of February 1, 2022, Elon Musk had a net worth of $243 billion, making him the wealthiest man globally, accompanied by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos ($168 billion). Musk is the founder and chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX. The ten wealthiest individuals in the world are all worth more than $100 billion.

Most of the world’s wealthiest people were born in the United States.

Birthplaces of the world’s 100 richest people

The United States is the birthplace of 28 of the 100 wealthiest people globally. China follows the United States with 21 billionaires. The map below shows the birthplaces of one hundred richest people globally.

Here are the top 5 countries by the number of the wealthiest people born there.