The Geography of the World’s Richest People

February 6, 2022 Alex

Table of Contents

Top 10 countries by number of billionaires
Top 10 cities by number of billionaires
The proportion of the world’s billionaires and millionaires by region
Top 100 richest people on the planet
Birthplaces of the world’s 100 richest people

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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

Rank	Country	Number of billionaires
1	United States	724
2	China	698 (626 in mainland, 71 in Hong Kong, 1 in Macau)
3	India	140
4	Germany	136
5	Russia	117
6	Hong Kong	71
7	Brazil	65
8	Canada	64
9	United Kingdom	56
10	Italy	51

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

Rank	City	Number of billionaires
1	Beijing	100
2	New York City	99
3	Hong Kong	80
4	Moscow	79
5	Shenzhen	68
6	Shanghai	64
7	London	63
8	Mumbai	48
9	San Francisco	48
10	Hangzhou	47

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

Region	Billionaires	Millionaires
North America	31%	42%
Asia	36%	22%
Europe	18%	29%
Middle East	6%	2%
Russia & CIS	4%	1%
Latin America	3%	2%
Australia	2%	1%
Africa	1%	0.5%

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.

Rank	Name	Country of residence	Industry	Total net worth, $ billions
1	Elon Musk	United States	Technology	243
2	Jeff Bezos	United States	Technology	168
3	Bernard Arnault	France	Consumer	167
4	Bill Gates	United States	Technology	129
5	Larry Page	United States	Technology	117
6	Mark Zuckerberg	United States	Technology	113
7	Sergey Brin	United States	Technology	112
8	Warren Buffett	United States	Diversified	111
9	Steve Ballmer	United States	Technology	106
10	Larry Ellison	United States	Technology	101
11	Mukesh Ambani	India	Energy	94.4
12	Gautam Adani	India	Industrial	88.9
13	Francoise Bettencourt Meyers	France	Consumer	84.5
14	Changpeng Zhao	Canada	Finance	75
15	Zhong Shanshan	China	Diversified	74.6
16	Michael Bloomberg	United States	Media	70
17	Carlos Slim	Mexico	Diversified	69.8
18	Amancio Ortega	Spain	Retail	66.4
19	Jim Walton	United States	Retail	63.1
20	Rob Walton	United States	Retail	62.6
21	Alice Walton	United States	Retail	61.2
22	Charles Koch	United States	Industrial	59.8
23	Julia Flesher Koch	United States	Industrial	59.8
24	Michael Dell	United States	Technology	55.8
25	Phil Knight	United States	Consumer	54.9
26	Zeng Yuqun	Hong Kong	Industrial	51.6
27	Jacqueline Badger Mars	United States	Food and Beverage	51.3
28	John Mars	United States	Food and Beverage	51.3
29	Francois Pinault	France	Consumer	49.8
30	Ma Huateng	China	Technology	48.6
31	MacKenzie Scott	United States	Technology	47.9
32	Zhang Yiming	China	Technology	44.5
33	Jack Ma	China	Technology	38.9
34	Len Blavatnik	United States	Diversified	38.8
35	Klaus-Michael Kuehne	Germany	Industrial	38.2
36	Azim Premji	India	Technology	35.9
37	Giovanni Ferrero	Italy	Food and Beverage	35.7
38	Pallonji Mistry	Ireland	Industrial	34.9
39	Stephen Schwarzman	United States	Finance	33.1
40	He Xiangjian	China	Consumer	32.8
41	Leonardo Del Vecchio	Italy	Consumer	32.2
42	William Ding	China	Technology	31.3
43	Leonard Lauder	United States	Consumer	31.2
44	Leonid Mikhelson	Russia	Energy	30.9
45	Tadashi Yanai	Japan	Retail	30.9
46	Li Ka-shing	Hong Kong Real	Estate	30.6
47	Takemitsu Takizaki	Japan	Technology	30.4
48	Alain Wertheimer	France	Consumer	30.3
49	Gerard Wertheimer	France	Consumer	30.3
50	Dieter Schwarz	Germany	Retail	30
51	Vladimir Potanin	Russia	Commodities	29.7
52	Shiv Nadar	India	Technology	29.4
53	Miriam Adelson	United States	Entertainment	29.1
54	Alexey Mordashov	Russia	Industrial	27.2
55	Ken Griffin	United States	Finance	27
56	Vladimir Lisin	Russia	Industrial	26.6
57	German Larrea	Mexico	Commodities	25.9
58	Eric Schmidt	United States	Technology	25.2
59	James Simons	United States	Finance	25.1
60	Dan Gilbert	United States	Real Estate	24.9
61	Li Shu Fu	China	Industrial	24.3
62	Lee Shau Kee	Hong Kong	Real Estate	23.9
63	Yang Huiyan	China	Real Estate	23.9
64	Susanne Klatten	Germany	Industrial	23.7
65	Henry Cheng	Hong Kong	Retail	23.4
66	Pang Kang	China	Food and Beverage	22.8
67	Wang Wei	China	Services	22.8
69	Carl Icahn	United States	Diversified	22.7
68	Radhakishan Damani	India	Retail	22.7
70	Jorge Paulo Lemann	Brazil	Food and Beverage	22.6
71	Stefan Quandt	Germany	Industrial	22.4
72	Iris Fontbona	Chile	Commodities	22.3
74	Colin Huang	China	Technology	22
73	Huang Shilin	China	Industrial	22
75	Abigail Johnson	United States	Finance	21.8
76	John Menard	United States	Retail	21.8
77	Thomas Peterffy	United States	Finance	21.8
80	Jensen Huang	United States	Technology	21.6
78	Lukas Walton	United States	Retail	21.6
79	Vagit Alekperov	Russia	Energy	21.6
81	Thomas Frist	United States	Health Care	21.5
82	Andrew Forrest	Australia	Commodities	21.4
84	Gina Rinehart	Australia	Commodities	21.3
83	Qin Yinglin	China	Food and Beverage	21.3
85	Wang Chuan-Fu	China	Consumer	21.2
86	Masayoshi Son	Japan	Technology	21.1
87	Alisher Usmanov	Russia	Diversified	21
88	Lakshmi Mittal	India	Commodities	21
89	Ernesto Bertarelli	Switzerland	Diversified	20.8
90	Zhang Zhidong	China	Technology	20.6
92	Dustin Moskovitz	United States	Technology	20.5
91	Elaine Marshall	United States	Industrial	20.5
93	James Dyson	United Kingdom	Consumer	20.5
94	Aliko Dangote	Nigeria	Industrial	20.4
95	Stefan Persson	Sweden	Retail	20
98	Budi Hartono	Indonesia	Diversified	19.7
96	Gennady Timchenko	Russia	Diversified	19.7
97	Peter Woo	Hong Kong	Real Estate	19.7
99	Guillaume Pousaz	Switzerland	Technology	19.4
100	Li Xiting	Singapore	Health Care	19.3

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.