How the Richest 1% in America Compare to the Wealthy in Other Countries (2024)

FAQs

How wealthy is the US compared to other countries? ›

The U.S. is now home to 37% of the world's millionaires, up from 35% in 2018. The divergence grows even more at the top of the wealth ladder. The U.S. has 9,850 centi-millionaires — those worth $100 million or more — compared with China's 2,352. The U.S. has about 788 billionaires to China's 305.

As of the second quarter 2023, the average American household had wealth of $1.09 million. The average wealth of households in the top 1 percent was about $33.4 million. In the top 0.1 percent, the average household had wealth of more than $1.52 billion.

The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation's entire middle class, federal data show. More than one-quarter of all household wealth, 26.5%, belongs to Americans who earn enough money to rank in the top percentile by income, according to Federal Reserve statistics through mid-2023.

Measuring based on PPP has a large impact when comparing wealthy countries to developing countries. China's nominal GDP is the second-largest after the United States, but measured at PPP, China's GDP is larger than that of the United States by a considerable margin.

Which is the wealthiest country? With an overall net worth of $145.8 trillion and a GDP of $25.46 trillion, the US is the number one richest nation in the world.

You now need a net worth of at least $5.8 million in order to be part of that small but elite group, according to the upcoming 2024 wealth report from Knight Frank. That is a notable 12% increase from the $5.1 million needed just one year ago.

In this article, White is used to describe non-Hispanic White householders; Black householders can be either Hispanic or non-Hispanic. In 2021, households with a White householder made up 65.3% of all U.S. households and held 80.0% of all wealth.

According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report for 2021, the threshold for being a member of the top 1% of the world's wealthiest people is a net worth of $2.3 million. However, this threshold can vary depending on the country, as the distribution of wealth can be different from one place to another.

Take the population, divide it by 100. So, at present in the US, about 4 million people are in the top 1%.

What percentile of wealth am I worldwide? ›

There are only 28,420 centi-millionaires in the world (as at June 2023), making this a very elite club. The Centi-Millionaire Report includes exclusive statistics on centi-millionaires provided by global wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth.

How much do you need to earn to be in the top 1% income bracket? To be in the top 1% of earners, you're looking at an average annual income of $819,324. The top 0.1% of Americans earn an average of $3,312,693.

They found men who had reached the age of 40 in 2014 and were in the top 10% in household income could expect to live to 88 years old. For those that were in the bottom 10%, life expectancy was just 76. This means that the richest Americans live 12 years longer than the poorest.

Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%.

The United States is the undisputed heavyweight when it comes to the economies of the world. America's gross domestic product in 2022 was more than 40% greater than that of China, the world No. 2. Even more striking, U.S. GDP was over five times that of the next two largest economies, Japan and Germany.

According to UBS' Global Wealth Report for 2023, the mean wealth per adult in the U.S. was higher than any surveyed country in the world except Switzerland. But the median wealth per adult was the same as Spain or Italy!

While the United States has consistently had the world's largest economy for some time, in the last fifty years the world has seen the rapid rise and fall in relative terms of the economies of other countries while the share of the United States has also fluctuated.

That's because consumer spending, which accounts for the biggest part of US GDP, has been relentless, even in the face of the highest interest rates in 23 years. But what's perhaps most remarkable about the US economic growth rate is how much it towers over similarly sized advanced economies.