There are 951 Asian billionaires, but the continent is also home to 60% of the world’s population. Most of the wealth is still concentrated in North America. According to some forecasts, the millionaires in China and India will double by 2026.
Milan ( / Agencies) – Outnumbering all other regions of the world, Asia has 951 billionaires. According to an analysis of Asian Nikkei, most of the wealth is still concentrated in the United States, but the rise of the Asian continent is evident, with a constant annual increase in the percentage of richest people in the world. Last month, India’s Gautam Adani became the first Asian to climb onto the podium of the world’s richest.
There are 777 billionaires in North America and 536 in Europe. A regional analysis shows that North America is home to $4.7 trillion, followed by Asia with $3.5 trillion and Europe with $2.4 trillion. In terms of percentage of population, it should be noted that the Asian continent is home to 60% of the world’s population, unlike the United States, with just over 4%, and Europe, with less than 10%.
Looking at the number of billionaires by country, the United States is still in the lead with 719. China and India follow with 440 and 161 billionaires, respectively. The 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have 114, followed by Taiwan with 45, South Korea with 28 and Japan with 27.
The number of billionaires began to grow in Europe during the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries and then multiplied in the United States thanks to subsequent technological innovations and globalization. However, emerging countries are currently producing more billionaires than Europe and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. Data from the Global Wealth Report published by Credit Suisse last month shows that between 2000 and 2021, the wealth of the richest 1% of the population grew 11-fold in India and 34-fold in China – growth well above 3-fold. 6 from the United States and 1.2 from Japan.
“Rising property prices are the main driver of wealth accumulation for Asians,” explains Soichiro Matsumoto, chief investment officer for Credit Suisse in Japan. However, the top positions are held by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, with a large number of shares in different companies, so Asia “needs time to catch up” to the United States.
While the number of billionaires has fallen in the last six months (126 Asians and 27 Americans fewer), Credit Suisse forecasts that the number of wealthy will double in China and India by 2026 (compared to 2021) due to rising domestic demand and infrastructure development.
