2004-6-24
This is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Economics
Report.
Two-thousand-three was a good year for wealthy people around the
world.
Merrill Lynch and Capgemini have released their yearly World
Wealth Report. Merrill Lynch is an American financial services
company. Capgemini is a French company that gives business advice.
Seven-point-seven million people worldwide had one million
dollars or more in wealth at the end of last year. The report says
the number grew by seven and a half percent from two-thousand two.
That year there were not many new millionaires.
But last year the investments of the wealthy did well. Their
wealth increased by almost eight percent. China, India, Spain and
the United States were high performers in the creation of wealth.
Wealthy people around the world bought more stock last year. The
report shows that their stock holdings as a share of their wealth
increased from twenty percent to thirty-five percent.
Last year, an economist at the Federal Reserve Board compared
stock ownership rates among Americans. That report said the
wealthiest one percent owned more than half of all stock held by
individuals or families as of two-thousand-one. The percentage was
even higher for government-secured investments in bonds. The top one
percent owned sixty-four percent of the bonds.
Stocks and bonds are called liquid assets, just like money in the
bank. Houses are less easy to sell. So the World Wealth Report does
not include the value of a personal home in its measure of wealth.
Last year, the number of millionaires increased at the highest
rates in Africa, North America and the Asia-Pacific areas. The
United States had the largest increase in numbers of any country.
But Europe with its larger population continued to have the most
millionaires, followed by North America. Both areas have over two
million millionaires.
The study says most very wealthy people are at or near retirement
age. Seventy percent are over fifty-five years old.
All together, high-worth individuals had
twenty-nine-million-million dollars in wealth last year. The World
Wealth Report says that is expected to reach forty-million-million
dollars by two-thousand-eight.
And, the richest of the rich are doing the best of all. The
report says a very small but fast growing group of seventy thousand
people are worth more than thirty million dollars.
This VOA Special English Economics Report was written by Mario
Ritter. This is Bob Doughty.