Billionaire

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SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a centibillionaire and the wealthiest person in the world.

A billionaire is a person whose net worth is at least one billion units of a given currency, typically USD. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultra high-net-worth individual. The American business magazine Forbes produces a global list of known U.S. dollar billionaires<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> every year and updates an internet version of this list in real time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world's first confirmed billionaire in 1916.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Nineteen individuals had attained the status of centibillionaires, each with a net worth of at least $100 billion, as of October 2025.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:As of there are 3028 billionaires worldwide, with a combined wealth of over $16.1 trillion, up nearly $2 trillion over 2024.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Current U.S. dollar billionaires

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Global share of wealth by wealth group, Credit Suisse, 2021
Global share of wealth by wealth group, Credit Suisse, 2017

According to the UBS/PwC Billionaires Report 2019 report released in November 2019, there are currently 2,101 U.S. dollar billionaires worldwide, from 66 countries, with a combined net worth of $8.5 trillion.<ref name="UBS 2019">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Also according to the report, billionaires have a substantial positive contribution to the sustainability and success of companies controlled by them. Billionaire-controlled companies listed on the equity market returned 17.8 percent, compared with the 9.1 percent of the MSCI AC World Index. According to the authors of the report, this Billionaire Effect is connected with smart risk-taking and willingness to plan and invest for the long term.

The majority of billionaires are male, as fewer than 11% (197 of 1,826) on the 2015 list were female billionaires.<ref name=BehindNumbers/> The United States has the largest number of billionaires of any country, with 536 Template:As of,<ref name=BehindNumbers>Template:Cite web</ref> while China, India and Russia are home to 213, 90 and 88 billionaires, respectively.<ref name=Forbes2015/><ref name="IndiaBillionaires2015">Template:Cite web</ref> Template:As of, only 46 billionaires were under the age of 40,<ref name=BehindNumbers/> while the list of American-only billionaires, as of 2010, had an average age of 66.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Different authorities use different methodologies to determine net worth and to rank them, and not all information about personal finances is publicly available. In 2019, Forbes counted a record 607 billionaires in the U.S.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Over the course of the 2020s, depending on the source and the year, the world's richest person has been reckoned to be Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and family, or Elon Musk.

From 2014 to 2019, the number of female billionaires grew by 46%. That is more than the number of male billionaires in the same period (39%). As of 2019 there were 233 female billionaires in the world, compared to 160 in 2013.<ref name="UBS 2019" />

Education and work experience

Billionaires come from a very wide variety of backgrounds. College education is not universal among billionaires, as almost 30% of billionaires around the world in 2015 did not have a college degree of any kind.<ref name="auto">Template:Cite web</ref> But this shows substantial correlation between education and success. More than 70% of these billionaires have some kind of college degree, while in the general US population only 38% have a college degree,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and in the general world population less than 10% of people have a college degree.

There is also a substantial correlation between top university education and billionaire status. The top 10 universities in the United States produced 99 of the top 400 billionaires in 2018, which makes these schools overrepresented among billionaires compared with the general population. For example, 10 billionaires (or 4%) had graduated from Harvard University, while Harvard graduates only make up 0.2% of the general population of adults in the United States; in other words, a billionaire from the Forbes 400 list that year was 20 times more likely to have gone to Harvard than a non-billionaire.<ref name="TechRepublic" />

Billionaires come from a wide range of fields of study and initial employment. The most common field of university education for billionaires was finance and economics, which contributed to a combined 15.5% of billionaire educations,<ref name="auto"/><ref name="TechRepublic">Template:Cite web</ref> a similar proportion to the general US population.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Very few college-educated billionaires pursued business interests in their field of study, with the exception of computer science majors. All twelve of the computer science major billionaires worked in computer science, while only half of engineers worked in engineering, and less than a quarter of finance and economics majors ever worked in finance or economics. The most common field for billionaires to enter for their first job was sales and military service.<ref name="TechRepublic" /> Military service produced 21 billionaires.<ref name="TechRepublic" />

Inequality

Template:See also Between 2010 and 2015 the wealth of the richest 62 people among the World's Billionaires increased by $500 bn (£350 bn) to $1.76 tn.<ref name="Oxfam">Template:Cite web</ref> More recently, in 2017, an Oxfam report noted that just eight billionaires have as much net worth as "half the human race".<ref name="OXF-20170116">Template:Cite press release</ref><ref name="NYT-20170116">Template:Cite news</ref> However, the Oxfam report has been criticized for considering debt as negative wealth, which leads to wealthy people with large amounts of debt being considered poor or not wealthy.<ref name="Vox">Template:Cite web</ref>

Statistics

These aggregated statistics for billionaires include the total number of known billionaires and the net worth of the world's wealthiest individual for each year since 2008. Data for each year is from the annual Forbes list of billionaires, with currency figures given in U.S. dollars. Data since 2018 also includes the Wealth-X billionaire census which typically finds higher numbers than Forbes.

Year Total number of
billionaires		 Combined wealth of
known billionaires		 Number of billionaires World's wealthiest
individual
U.S. Chinese Indian German Russian Name Net worth
2024<ref name="v688">Template:Cite web</ref> 2,781 $14.2 trillion 813 473 200 Bernard Arnault & family $233 billion
2022<ref name="q853">Template:Cite web</ref> 2,668 $9.562 trillion 735 539 166 134 83 Elon Musk $219 billion
2021<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 2,755 $10.016 trillion 724 626 140 136 117 Elon Musk $320 billion<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
2020<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 2,095 $10.2 trillion 614 389 102 99 Jeff Bezos $188 billion
2019<ref name="Forbes2019">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 2,153–2,604 $8.6–8.7 trillion 609–705 285–324 82–106 98–102 Jeff Bezos $131 billion
2018<ref name="Forbes2018">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="guardian">Template:Cite news</ref> 2,208–2,754 $9.1–9.2 trillion 585–680 338–372 117–119 96–111 Jeff Bezos $133 billion
2017<ref name="Forbes-2017">Template:Cite news</ref> 2,043 $7.71 trillion 565 319 101 106 Jeff Bezos $99.6 billion
2016 1,810 $6.48 trillion 540 251 90 75 Bill Gates $75 billion
2015<ref name="Forbes2015">Template:Cite web</ref> 1,826 $7.05 trillion 536 213 88 88 Bill Gates $79.2 billion
2014<ref name="Forbes2014">Template:Cite web</ref> 1,645 $6.4 trillion 492 152 56<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 111 Bill Gates $78 billion
2013<ref name="Forbes2013">Template:Cite web</ref> 1,426 $5.4 trillion 442 122 – 110 Carlos Slim $73 billion
2012<ref name="Forbes2012">Template:Cite web</ref> 1,226 $4.6 trillion 425 95 – 96 Carlos Slim $73 billion
2011<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 1,210 $4.5 trillion 413 115 – 101 Carlos Slim $74 billion
2010<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 1,011 $3.6 trillion 404 89 – 62 Carlos Slim $53.5 billion
2009<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 793 $2.4 trillion 359 28 – 32 Bill Gates $40 billion
2008<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 1,125 $4.4 trillion 470 – – 87 Warren Buffett $62 billion

See also

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References

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Further reading

Template:Wealth Template:Lists of billionaires Template:Authority control

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