The “small people” — middle-class and low-income people in the United States and abroad — who saw their income and the value of their assets slashed during 2009, the first full year of the Bush Recession, may have wondered where all that money went.
Here is a clue from the annual Capegemini and Merrill Lynch Word Wealth Report. Read it and weep, fellow serfs:
State of the World’s Wealth: The world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) grew 17.1 percent to 10.0 million in 2009. HNWI financial wealth increased 18.9 percent from 2008 levels to $39 trillion. After losing 24.0 percent in 2008, Ultra-HNWIs saw wealth rebound 21.5 percent in 2009.
Steve Bertoni at Forbes.com provides analysis:
- The rich got richer: The combined wealth of the world’s rich rose 18.9% to $39.0 trillion in 2009.
- For the first time in the survey’s history, red hot Asia is home to as many rich people as stodgy Europe: 3 million each, and as a group, Asia’s millionaires are richer (see next point).
- The rich in North America control $10.7 trillion in wealth; Asia $9.7 trillion; Europe $9.5 trillion; Latin America $6.7 trillion, Middle East $1.5 trillion; Africa $ 1 trillion.
The New York Times focused on statistics for the United States:
The report did take note of the concentration of wealth among the very rich. At the end of 2009, it said, these “ultra-high net worth individuals” held 35.5 percent of the total $39 trillion of the world’s wealth, or an estimated $13.8 trillion, even though this group represented less than 1 percent of the 10 million people classified as being rich, or roughly 90,000 worldwide.
Based on the report’s numbers, rich people had wealth averaging about $3.9 million last year, while ultra-rich people had fortunes averaging about $150 million.
As expected, the most millionaires could be found in the United States, where their ranks rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year, according to the report. Their total wealth in North America rose 17.8 percent, to $10.7 trillion.
Once again, the number of very rich people in North America was much smaller, at just 36,300, the report said.
