Worldwide, the number of dollar millionaires has declined. Growth continues in Norway however, and more than 174,000 Norwegians are now considered dollar millionaires.
The number of Norwegian dollar billionaires has tripled since 2007, but the increase was only 2.4 per cent from 2017 to 2018.
This shows the World Wealth Report 2019 report, which was published by the consulting and technology company Capgemini on Tuesday.
In the report, a dollar billionaire is defined as a person who has one million dollars in investable wealth beyond his primary residence.
The moderate growth is partly due to a flattening of property prices and lower growth in the stock markets, the report says.
More stringent requirements for mortgages and interest rate increases will cool the Norwegian housing market somewhat, and this also contributes to the adventurous growth of wealth we have seen in previous years flattening out in the country. At the same time, Norway is among the few western countries that show positive growth in the number of dollar millionaires, says Ingrid Lehne, adviser in Capgemini Invent.
Southeast Asia
Worldwide, the number of dollar millionaires has declined by 0.3 percent following continuous growth over the past seven years.
Worldwide, the decline in the number of dollar millionaires is largely due to the development of stock markets and, in particular, the cooling we see in economies in Southeast Asia, with China at the forefront. At the same time, we see that Brexit and trade conflicts between several major powers create uncertainty in several markets, which also affects us in Norway, says Ingrid Lehne, adviser in Capgemini Invent.
Worldwide, dollar millionaires’ total assets have declined by 3 per cent. The largest is the decline in Southeast Asia, and China accounts for more than a quarter of the global decline.
Growth in the Middle East
The decline is largely due to weakened wealth among the richest. According to the report, the richest percentage of world dollar millionaires accounted for three-quarters of the decline in wealth.
In the Middle East, the trend is the opposite. Here, dollar millionaires’ assets grew by 4 per cent from 2017 to 2018, and the number of dollar millionaires increased by 6 per cent.
More than six out of ten world dollar millionaires in the world live in the United States, Japan, Germany and China.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today