Billionaires break records in a world of poverty reduction but greater inequality

BarcelonaThings are going well for the richest. Much more so than for the rest, although global poverty is declining worldwide due to economic growth, although the COVID crisis halted this trend. And, at the same time, inequality is growing, not so much between countries but within them, with an ever-widening gap in societies between those who have the most and those who have the least. The richest 1% have stabilized their share of global wealth at around 40%, below the levels of the neoliberal policies inaugurated by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK during the period from 1980 to the mid-2000s, a period in which they became the owners.

But starting in the late 2000s, after the 2008 financial crisis, a trend spread that led to a global agreement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—an organization of the most industrialized countries—and the G20 (G-20) to impose a 15% tax on multinationals. The measure is being implemented in the European Union (EU) and other countries, but with the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House, the United States has managed to free its multinationals from the tax. And this makes it difficult to establish a burden also for the richest. This is an idea of economists such as Nobel Prize winner in economics Joseph Stiglitz and others such as Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Piketty, which would be aimed at people with fortunes of more than $1 billion, which last year exceeded the $3 billion threshold for the first time. And organizations like the Tax Justice Network and Oxfam have joined in, calling for "centimillionaires" (more than 100 million) to also be taxed. The initiative has met with considerable resistance, especially from the US, the country with the largest fortunes.

For now, things are going quite well for this group, which usually benefits more than others from legal means of reducing their tax bill. An example is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and one of the men with one of the largest fortunes in the world, who last June arguably rented Venice, a city symbol of power and wealth, for his wedding. The businessman, owner of, among other luxury items, the sailboat Koru, spent between $10 and $30 million, according to some estimates, on a three-day celebration for his wedding to journalist Lauren Sanchez, which featured 250 select guests, including stars, royalty, and financial moguls. Prestigious chefs, designer clothes, yachts, handmade welcome bags...

1,000 years to pay

It was an event whose cost is highly noteworthy, and which would take the average Spanish worker about 1,000 years to pay (a millennium). But it's a negligible figure for the fourth richest person in the world, who was estimated to have a fortune of $246 billion on August 1, according to the latest ranking compiled by Forbes magazine, which is updated monthly and varies according to the weight of stock market holdings in the wealth of the richest. This amount is equivalent to about four times the annual budget of the Generalitat (Catalan government) and the entire public sector. It contrasts sharply with the 3.6 billion people, equivalent to 44% of the world's population, living below the poverty line set by the World Bank, which ranges between $2.15 and $6.85 a day, depending on a country's income level.

Bezos is only surpassed on a global scale by Elon Musk, the magnate owner of Tesla and until recently a confidant of US President Donald Trump to reduce public spending, with $406,500 (eight times the budget of the Generalitat). He is the only individual on the planet who exceeds the $400 billion level (€343 billion at the current exchange rate). Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corporation, with $262 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, the company that controls Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram), with $233 billion, are second and third on the same list. Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, a leader in the production of graphics cards for artificial intelligence, has entered this select club. The co-founders of Google, Larry Page, at number five, and Sergey Brin, at number seven, also remain on the list. top from the ranking, as do Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Warren Buffett, some of the world's leading investors through Berkshire Hathaway, who are therefore included in the billionaire classification.

The vast majority of those at the top of the global wealth rankings, with assets equivalent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of an average country, are entrepreneurs who started from scratch or very low and are usually part of the technology sector, which gives them greater potential and market valuation. Of the top ten, nine are from the US, and only one, Bernard Arnault, the French owner of the Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton (LVMH) luxury empire, represents Europe. Many of the ranking members supported Donald Trump in the last US election, and some, like Musk, held office, albeit briefly.

The lists of the richest people in the US and the world are practically identical, but billionaires can be found in every country and continent. In Latin America, the richest person is Carlos Slim and his family, owners of América Móvil, the largest telecommunications operator in the region. In Asia, the ranking is led by Mukesh Ambani of India, president of a conglomerate operating in sectors such as energy, telecommunications, and retail, called Reliance Industries. In Africa, where fortunes are also found as in the rest of the continents, the richest person is Aliko Dangote, president of a conglomerate with a presence in the cement, petrochemical, energy, and oil refining sectors, under the name Damgote Industries. And in Australia, the list is headed by a woman, Gina Rinehart, president of Hancock Prospecting, an iron ore, coal, and gas mining conglomerate, and investments in energy and rare earths. China also stands out, with Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, leading the ranking. Russia, dominated by oligarchs, is a separate case, with Vladimir Potanin, president and founder of Oneximbank and owner of the Norilsk mining complex, standing out as the richest.

Entrepreneurship and Heritage

But, in any case, the self-made men either self-made women, that is, self-made men or women with their own entrepreneurship, is not the most common case in some countries. There are surnames that remain in the elite for generations. In fact, in Spain, 74% of millionaires are inherited, well above the 27% in the US; and only surpassed by Germany, with 75%, according to Forbes.

Despite weighing less in the total, in the US there are many examples of heirs, such as the descendants of Sam Walton, founder of the US department store chain Walmart, who always rank high in these rankings; or the Mars family, owners of Snickers and M&M's, among others. In Spain, one of the best-known examples is Sandra Ortega, daughter from the first marriage of Inditex founder Amancio Ortega, one of the richest men in the world. And in France, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, daughter of L'Oréal's largest shareholder.

According to a recent report by Oxfam International, the wealth of the richest 1% has increased by more than $33.9 trillion in real terms since 2015. The same analysis estimates that this amount could end annual poverty more than 22 times the poverty line3, considering the poverty line. With the increase in GDP worldwide, inequality between countries has decreased, largely driven by globalization, but within countries the gap between those who have the most and those who have the least has increased, in many cases.

There are scholars, such as Harvard's Michael Sandel, who has published a book of conversations with economist Thomas Piketty, both leading experts on the subject, who attribute the rise in inequality to "neoliberal globalization." This trend, he asserts, has created a divide between winners and losers that generates hatred and resentment among many working-class people, fueling the rise of the far right and populist figures like Donald Trump, he explained in an interview with the newspaper ARA. Sandel blames this trend not only on the right, but also on the center-left, which has done almost nothing to change the weight it gives to the market and which led to the taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street after the 2008 crisis.

In total, there are 58 million people worldwide with a net worth over $1 million, representing 1.5% of the global adult population, according to a report prepared by the Swiss financial empire UBS. About a third are in the US, with a total of 22 million, followed closely behind by China, with six million. In the last decade, the number of millionaires with net worths between $1 and $5 million globally has quadrupled. By 2024, a global increase will be recorded, with the addition of 680,000 new millionaires, of which the US contributed 379,000, which means more than 1,000 a day.

At the top of the pyramid are 3,028 billionaires, that is, people with net worths exceeding $1 billion, a true record. The combined wealth of this elite has soared by $6.5 trillion in real terms since 2015 to $16.1 trillion, now equivalent to 14.6% of all the wealth generated annually in the world, i.e., global GDP, according to the annual list published by Forbes (2). Between the US and China, the wealthy accounted for 56% of total wealth.

Global wealth is projected to increase by 4.6% in 2024, four-tenths more than in 2023, driven particularly by wealth growth in the Americas (11%), according to a UBS report on wealth in major economies. Switzerland returned to the top spot, while the US moved up to second. The average wealth per adult citizen rose to $687,166 in Switzerland, while in the United States, up two places from 2023, it was $620,654, according to a ranking in which Hong Kong returned to third place and Luxembourg fell two places to fourth.

The UK remained in 13th place with an average wealth of $339,700, France dropped to 16th (301,503), Germany to 19th (256,715), and Spain and Italy took 22nd and 32nd places with $214,663 and $214,663 respectively. The 16th edition of the report, traditionally published by Credit Suisse until its takeover by UBS in 2023, noted that despite the overall rise, half of the 56 markets studied saw a decline in average wealth per adult.

In the chapter dedicated to the world's millionaires (around 58 million with combined assets of $226 trillion, according to UBS), it was indicated that the number of people in this situation increased by 1.2% last year, or 684,000 more people with wealth exceeding one million. Almost 40% (23 million, 379,000 more than in 2023) are in the United States, while China occupies the second position in this ranking, with 6.3 million, followed by France (2.8 million), Japan (2.7 million) and Germany (2.6 million). The United Kingdom, also with 2.6 million, is in sixth place, while Italy is ninth (1.3 million), Spain is twelve (1.2 million) and in Latin America, both Brazil (433,000) and Mexico (399,000) are on the list of the 25 countries with the most millionaires.

The largest population segment on the planet according to the study is that of adults with assets between $10,000 and $100,000 (1.57 billion people, 41% of the total), who in this decade have surpassed for the first time the number of people who do not exceed 10,000. At the top of the pyramid, 2,860 people in the world have wealth between $1 billion and $50 billion, 16 between $50 billion and $100 billion, and another 15 exceed $100 billion.

According to the study published annually by Capgemini, Spain lost millionaires last year, falling from 250,600 to 246,600, but the wealth of those who are part of this select club continued to grow. These are some of the conclusions of the Global Wealth 2025 report. Unlike what happened in other countries, the number of high net worth investable individuals (HNWIs) – which includes those with assets of $1 million or more, excluding their primary residence or collectibles – decreased by 1.6%. Nevertheless, the country remains in 15th place among the 25 countries with the largest millionaire population worldwide.

This group typically operates through companies and other instruments that reduce their tax burden. In fact, according to the latest available 2022 income tax statistics, only around 15,000 taxpayers in Spain earned more than €601,000.

Despite the increase in the total number of millionaires, the value of the wealth of those below this threshold continued to grow, rising by nearly 1% last year to $7.1 billion, up to a total of $733.55 billion in 2024. 4.2%, according to Capgemini.

The study also found that, overall, alternative investments were gaining ground among the wealthiest. According to the analysis, this select group allocated 15% of their portfolios to alternative investments, including venture capital and cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.

The truth is, they are willing to take on more risk to obtain higher returns. This is especially true among the wealthiest millennials (born between 1982 and 1994) and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012). Overall, the study reveals that the wealthiest segment globally grew by 6.2%, driven by stock market gains and the commitment to artificial intelligence (AI). The United States leads the number of millionaires, with a 7.6% increase to 7.9 million.