China Has More Rich People Than the U.S. For the First Time Ever

China has outranked the United States in having the highest number of residents in the top 10% of global wealth.

Credit Suisse Group, a Swiss financial services company, recently highlighted the growing wealth and the widening inequality gap around the world in its 2019 Global Wealth Report.

“China now has 4.4 million millionaires and achieved another landmark this year with 100 million members of the global top 10%, overtaking for the first time the 99 million members in the United States,” the 10th edition of the report revealed, according to U.S. News & World Report.

China achieved such a feat despite the economic slowdown and an ongoing trade war with the U.S.

“The global financial crisis caused a small setback, but wealth growth soon resumed and, unlike most other economies, China came close to matching its pre-crisis pace, at least until 2014,” the report noted.

Based on the findings, nearly half of the people in the world who are considered to be in the middle class are Chinese.

It further credited China for elevating the lives of over 850 million people out of poverty in the past four decades.

The report also noted that China “was one of the few countries to avoid the impact of the global financial crisis.”

“China’s progress has enabled it to replace Europe as the principal source of global wealth growth and to replace Japan as the country with the second-largest number of millionaires.”

China, which had lower ranking at the beginning of the 21st century, exhibited economic growth significantly faster than other countries.

Total household wealth in China has grown from $3.7 trillion to $63.8 trillion this century, according to the report.

The authors of the wealth report, however, also pointed out how inequality has risen considerably since 2000.

There are currently 47 million millionaires in the world, which represents 1% of those who own 44% of all wealth in the world.

The number of very wealthy people in the U.S. is still the highest in the world. America also has the most members in the top 1% of the wealth and holds 40% of the world’s millionaires.

In the category of the highest average wealth per adult, Switzerland tops the list of nations with $564,650.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong comes at second with $489,260 and the U.S. at $432,370.

Feature Image via Getty

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