How Rich Are The 1% By Country

The top 1% of wealth varies a lot from country to country. It is $8 million in Monaco, but only $400,000 in Russia.

Also, keep in mind that the chart above is only showing the top twenty countries in the list of thirty countries studied.

The entry point for Monaco’s richest 1% is almost 400 times greater than in Kenya, the lowest ranked of 30 locations in Knight Frank’s study.

So, in Kenya, you are in the richest 1% at about $20,000 of net worth. 

It occurs to me that it would be fruitful to normalize this to per capita GDP in order to measure income concentration.

Japan at $1,500,000, with a high per capita GDP, for example, looks pretty egalitarian, while Singapore, at $2,900,000, with a fairly comparable per capital GDP looks very unequal.

The United Arab Emirates at $1,300,000 is considerably less than I would have expected. China, at $850,000 is pretty high for a country that is nominally still Communist.

The very rich (defined as $30 million or more of net worth) are concentrated in a small number of countries: