2006 wealth report, wealth scaling

2006 2005 Wealth Amount
3 2 US$30B+ Forbes list (which mainly catches owners
49 32 US$10B+ of public assets, can underestimate some
124 102 US$5B+ like CTO of Cisco, who may be billionaire
793 691 US$1B+ from cisco stock + large startup positions)
8200 7500 US$160M+ (my own estimate)
85400 77500 US$30M+ from the Merryl /cap gemini reports
820000 745000 US$5 to 30M
7.8M 7.4M US$1-5M Global number, US number 33% (2.6 million)
8.7M 8.2M US$1M+ Global number, US number 33% (2.6 million)
~24M ~22M US$500K-1M doesn’t include primary residence, (estimate)

The wealth of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), people with net financial assets of at least U.S. $1 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables, climbed to U.S. $33.3 trillion in 2005.

As people get richer they invest in more alternative investments. Alternative investments like venture capital and angel investments in technology companies. More wealth tends to mean increasing numbers of funders for technology.

Other wealth statistic sources

China growing middle class China has 320,000 millionaires according to the 2006 report which is reporting on 2005 estimates.