Global Wealth Pyramid: Just 1.6% of Adults Own Nearly Half of World's Wealth

The world got richer in 2024, with global personal wealth growing by 4.6%, but its distribution remains uneven, according to an analysis by visualcapitalist.com. It shows that at the top of the global wealth pyramid is a small elite who own nearly half of the world's assets, while billions of people at the bottom have only a tiny fraction of global wealth.

The source cited presents the "pyramid” of global wealth based on the number of people and the share and amount of wealth they own, according to data from the latest UBS report.

UBS divides the world's 3.8 billion adults into four wealth rungs, from those with less than $10,000 to those with more than $1 million, who are at the top of the global wealth pyramid. Thus, at the top of the pyramid, 60 million adults, who represent just 1.6% of the global population, own a total wealth of $226 trillion, or almost half of the total wealth of households worldwide (48.1%). Below the top of the pyramid, the world's upper-middle class (those with a net worth of $100,000 to $1 million) includes 628 million adults who collectively own $184.5 trillion, or 39.2% of global wealth.

The largest group is in the lower-middle bracket: 1.57 billion adults with $10,000 to $100,000, owning a total of $56.8 trillion. Although they represent 41% of the world's population, this group owns only 12% of global wealth.

At the base of the pyramid are 1.55 billion adults - 40.7% of the population. Together, they own $2.7 trillion, or 0.6% of global wealth.

Of the 60 million adults at the top of the global wealth pyramid, 2,891 are billionaires, with a combined net worth of more than $15.6 trillion, according to the source cited. Of these, only 15 are worth more than $100 billion, while another 16 are in the $50 billion to $100 billion range. The remaining 2,860 billionaires are worth less than $50 billion.