Joining the world’s most exclusive club — the top 1% — has arguably never looked more doable, but a lot depends on the country in which you’re trying to achieve that status.
That’s according to the 2024 Knight Frank Wealth Report, which lays out how many millions it takes for an individual to join the most-moneyed club across the world.
As exclusive as the one-percenter appellation may sound, it’s “actually easier to become a member of this particular club than it is to gain UHNWI status,” observes the Knight Frank report, released Wednesday.
Anyone who has achieved UHNWI status is an ultra-high-net-worth individual with net wealth of $30 million or more.
Define “easier,” right? The country with the highest barrier to 1% entry is Monaco, where more than $12.8 million is required to be part of that top-percentage-point category as of the end of 2023.
The five countries with the highest bars to entry are Monaco, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the U.S. and Singapore.
In the U.S., the threshold is $5.8 million. And for those seeking a fast track into the 1% club, and with unrestricted freedom to relocate, in China, at the bottom of that list of 17 countries, just over $1 million is required to qualify as a one-percenter, and, just ahead of it is Japan, where just under $2 million is needed.
Knight Frank, a global real-estate firm, said the number of UHNWI individuals globally rose by 4.2% to 626,619 from 601,300 a year earlier, which more than reversed a decline seen in 2022.
The report included an attitudes survey that showed how optimistic money managers were that their clients would amass more wealth in 2024. On a scale of 1 to 5, the Middle East came out on top, with North America lower down, according to this chart:
Looking across generations, the report found one group in particular was most optimistic about building their wealth — Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012, by the Pew Research Center’s reckoning), of whom 75% said they expected their wealth to increase in 2024. Boomers (born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, between mid-1946 and mid-1964) were, among survey respondents, at the lower end, with Generation X (born from the end of the postwar baby boom through 1980) not far behind, at just over 50% each.
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