Millionaire - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth

Net worth

In business, net worth is the total assets minus total outside liabilities of an individual or a company. For a company, this is called shareholders' preference and may be referred to as book value. Net worth is stated as at a particular year in time...

or wealth

Wealth

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...

is equal to or exceeds one million

Million

One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...

units of currency

Currency

In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...

. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account

Bank account

A Bank account is a financial account recording the financial transactions between the customer and the bank and the resulting financial position of the customer with the bank .-Account types:...

or savings account

Savings account

Savings accounts are accounts maintained by retail financial institutions that pay interest but cannot be used directly as money . These accounts let customers set aside a portion of their liquid assets while earning a monetary return...

. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire, which makes that amount of wealth a goal for some, and almost unattainable for others. In countries that use the short scale

Long and short scales

The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...

number naming system, a billionaire

Billionaire

A billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the...

is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros, or the currency of the given country (e.g. $1,000,000,000). In contrast, a billionaire in countries that use the long scale

Long and short scales

number naming system would be someone who has at least a million times a million units of currency (e.g. $1,000,000,000,000).
The increasing number of millionaires is partially due to prevailing economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, especially inflation

Inflation

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...

. The purchasing power

Purchasing power

Purchasing power is the number of goods/services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if you had taken one dollar to a store in the 1950s, you would have been able to buy a greater number of items than you would today, indicating that you would have had a greater purchasing...

of a million US dollars in 1959 is equivalent to 7.3 million dollars in 2009. Increasingly, the term denotes the status of high wealth. American sociologist Leonard Beeghley

Leonard Beeghley

Leonard Beeghley is Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of Florida since 1975. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside in 1975 and has since published seven books over the course of his career...

classifies all households with net worth exceeding USD 1 million as "The Rich". As of 2008, there were 10 million people around the globe who are classified as U.S.-dollar millionaires.

Terminology

The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey
Vivian Grey
Vivian Grey is Benjamin Disraeli's first novel, published by Henry Colburn in 1826. In 1827, a second volume was published. Originally published anonymously, ostensibly by a so-called "man of fashion," part 1 caused a considerable sensation in London society...

, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli. An earlier English word "millionary" was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary". The first American printed use of the word is thought to be in an obituary of New York tobacco manufacturer Pierre Lorillard II

Pierre Lorillard II

Pierre Lorillard II also known as Pierre Lorillard Jr., was an American tobacco manufacturer, industrialist, banker, businessman, and real estate tycoon.-Biography:...

in 1843.

The increasing prevalence of people with more and more money has given rise to additional terms to further differentiate millionaires. A multimillionaire has a net worth of more than 2 million units of currency, a decamillionaire has a net worth of more than 10 million units of currency, and a hectomillionaire has a net worth of more than 100 million units of currency. The term centimillionaire has become synonymous with hectomillionaire in America, despite the centi- prefix meaning 1/100, not 100, in the metric system.

While statistics regarding financial assets and net worth are presented by household, the term is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. That is, even though the term statistically refers only to households, common usage is often in reference only to an individual.

Net worth vs. financial assets

Recently, there has been some controversy over how to correctly determine a person's status as a millionaire. One of the two most commonly used measurements is net worth, which counts the total value of all property owned by a household minus the household's debts. According to this definition, a household owning an $800k home, $50k of furnishings, two cars worth $60k, a $60k retirement savings account, $45k in mutual funds, and a $325k vacation home with a $250k mortgage, $40k in car loans, and $25k in credit card debt would be worth about $1,085,000; and every individual in this household would thus be a millionaire. However, according to the net financial assets measurement used for some specific applications (such as evaluating an investor's expected tolerance for risk for stockbroker ethics), equity in one's principal residence is excluded, as are lifestyle assets, such as the car and furniture. Therefore the above example household would only have net financial assets of $80,000. Another term used is "net investable assets" or working capital

Working capital

Working capital is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business, organization or other entity, including governmental entity. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is considered a part of operating capital. Net working capital is...

. These practitioners may use the term "millionaire" to mean somebody who is free to invest a million units of currency through them as broker. For similar reasons, those who market goods, services, and investments to high net worth individual

High net worth individual

A high-net-worth individual is a person with a high net worth. In the private banking business, these individuals typically are defined as having investable assets in excess of US$1 million. As explained below, the U.S...

s are careful to specify a net worth "not counting principal residence."

In the real estate bubble

Real estate bubble

A real estate bubble or property bubble is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets...

up to 2007, average house prices in some U.S. regions exceeded $1 million, but many homeowners owed large amounts to banks holding mortgages on their homes. For this reason there are many people in million-dollar homes whose net worth is far short of a million—-in some cases the net worth is actually negative.

Influence

While millionaires constitute only a small percentage of the population, they hold substantial control over economic resources with the most powerful and prominent individuals usually ranking among them. Also, the total amount of money held by millionaires can equal the same amount of money held by a far higher number of poor people. The Gini coefficient

Gini coefficient

The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variability and Mutability" ....

, and other measures in economics, estimated for each country, are useful for figuring out how many of the poorest people have the equivalent total wealth of the few richest in the country. Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

and Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

magazines maintain lists of people based on their net worth and are generally considered authorities on the subject. According to Forbes latest annual list of the World's Billionaires published in March 2008 there are currently 1125 members of the exclusive Billionaire's club US-dollar billionaires in the world.

Sixteen percent of millionaires inherited their fortunes. Forty-seven percent of millionaires are business owners. Twenty-three percent of the world's millionaires got that way through paid work, consisting mostly of skilled professionals or managers.

Historical worth

Depending on how it is calculated, a million US dollars in 1900 is equivalent to 2006 US dollars of

$24,766,584.77 using the Consumer price index
Consumer price index
A consumer price index measures changes in the price level of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The CPI, in the United States is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as "a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of...

,
$21,224,697.05 using the GDP deflator
GDP deflator
In economics, the GDP deflator is a measure of the level of prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy...

,
$114,128,571.43 using the unskilled wage
Wage
A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by workers in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to workers and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees...

,
$162,813,054.25 using the nominal GDP
Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....

per capita,
$641,531,874.47 using the relative share of GDP
Gross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....

,

Thus one would need to have a little over twenty million dollars today to have the purchasing power

Purchasing power

of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than a hundred million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy.

Multimillionaire

Another commonly used term is multimillionaire. As the term implies, multimillionaire applies to those individuals residing in households with a net worth or wealth of two million or more units of currency. Only a small minority of households are indeed multimillionaire households. The term also has a more prestigious connotation than millionaire.

Roughly 1.0% of high net worth individual

High net worth individual

s (HNWIs) can also correctly be identified as ultra-high-net-worth individuals (ultra-HNWIs), those who reside in households with a net worth or wealth of $30 million or more. There are approximately 95,000 ultra-HNWIs in the world with 61,600 or 64.8% residing in the United States and Europe.

Number of millionaires in the world

The "World Wealth Report" is a report on individuals with a net worth of at least $1 million in all assets except their primary residence. The report is compiled annually by Capgemini

Capgemini

Capgemini is a French global IT services company, one of the world's largest management consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies with a staff of 114,274 operating in 40 countries. It is headquartered in Paris and was founded in 1967 by Serge Kampf, the current chairman, in...

for Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...

.

World Wealth Report 2007 – "The 11th annual World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch/Capgemini finds the World’s High Net Worth (HNW) population growing to 9.5 million with their assets rising to $37.2 trillion."

The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including first homes, fell by 2.5 million to 6.7 million in 2008, according to the Spectrum Group report, as reported by Reuters.

After the 27 percent drop, the number of millionaires is at the lowest level since 2003, when the millionaire population stood at 6.2 million.

The S&P 500 stock index has lost over half its value since the stock market peaked in October 2007, wiping billions from savings, while wealthy households also saw declines in the value of other assets such as property.

From the housing market peak in the second quarter of 2006, home prices have plummeted 26.7 percent through December, according to Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index.

The number of U.S. households with a net worth over $5 million, again not including first homes, fell by 28 percent to 840,000.
Some growth in international wealth and the number of high net worth individuals can be attributed to the weakness of the US dollar, as stated in the report.

According to the World Wealth Report 2010, the number of millionaires in Asia Pacific (Asia minus the Middle East) surpassed Europe’s for the first time in 2009

HNWIs (more than $1 million)
Region	Number (2009)	% of regional population (2006)
Global	10,000,000	0.15%
North America North America North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...	3,100,000	0.62%
Europe Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...	2,900,000	0.41%
Middle East Middle East The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...	400,000	0.10%
Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific or Asia Pacific is the part of the world in or near the Western Pacific Ocean...	3,000,000	0.06%
Latin America Latin America Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...	400,000	0.07%
Africa Africa Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...	100,000	0.01%

Ultra-HNWIs (Ultra-HNWIs Account for 0.9% of All HNWIs) (more than $30 million, in 2009)

UHNWIs (more than $30 million)
Region	Number (2009)	% of regional population (2006)
Global	93,100	0.001%
North America North America North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...	36,300	0.007%
Europe Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...	20,700	0.003%
Middle East Middle East The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...	3,600	0.005%
Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific or Asia Pacific is the part of the world in or near the Western Pacific Ocean...	19,600	0.0004%
Latin America Latin America Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...	10,700	0.002%
Africa Africa Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...	2,000	0.0002%

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

has more female millionaires than male.

Number of millionaires by country

HNWIs (more than US$1 million, in 2009)			HNWIs (more than US$1 million, in 2010)	HNWI growth rate (%)2009-2010
Rank	Country	Number	Number	Number
—	World	10,000,000	10,900,000	9.0
1	United States	2,886,200	3,104,000	8.3
2	Japan	1,650,000	1,739,000	5.4
3	Germany	861,500	924,000	7.2
4	Mainland China	477,400	535,000	12.0
5	United Kingdom	448,000	454,000	1.4
6	Early Modern France	383,000	396,000	3.4
7	Canada	251,300	282,000	12.3
8	Switzerland	222,000	243,000	9.7
9	Australia	173,600	193,000	11.1
10	Italy	179,000	170,000	−4.7
11	Brazil	146,700	155,000	5.9
12	India	127,000	153,000	20.8

United States

There is a wide disparity in the estimates of the number of millionaires residing currently in the United States.
A quarterly report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit

Economist Intelligence Unit

The Economist Intelligence Unit is part of the Economist Group.It is a research and advisory company providing country, industry and management analysis worldwide and incorporates the former Business International Corporation, a U.S. company acquired by the parent organization in 1986...

on behalf of Barclays Wealth

Barclays Wealth

Barclays Wealth is a UK wealth manager providing international and private banking, advisory, fiduciary services, investment management and, through Barclays Stockbrokers, brokerage....

in 2007 estimated that there were 16,600,000 millionaires in the USA.

According to TNS

Taylor Nelson Sofres

Taylor Nelson Sofres is a leading market research and market information group. Formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, the firm was acquired by WPP Group in October 2008 for 1.6 billion pounds.-History:...

Financial Services, as reported by CNN Money, 2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005. According to TNS, as of mid-2006 the number of millionaire US households was 9.3 million, with an increase of half a million since 2005. Millionaire households thus constituted roughly seven percent of all American households. The study also found that half of all millionaire households in the US were headed by retirees. In 2004 the United States saw a "33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria in 2003," fueled largely by the country's real estate boom.

A report by Capgemini

Capgemini

for Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch

on the other hand stated that as of 2007 there are approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who hold at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences.

According to TNS Financial Services, Los Angeles County has the highest number of millionaires, totalling over 262,800 households as of mid-2006. Los Angeles County is also the largest single jurisdiction of any kind in the United States.

Top 10 counties by HNWIs (more than $1 million, in 2009)
County	State	Number of millionaire households
Los Angeles County	California California California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...	268,138
Cook County Cook County - Counties :Cook County, Georgia, USCook County, IllinoisCook County, Minnesota, USCook County, New South Wales, Australia*Cook County, New Zealand, one of the former counties of New Zealand on the North Island...	Illinois Illinois Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...	171,118
Orange County Orange County Orange County is the name of several counties in the United States of America:* Orange County, California* Orange County, Florida* Orange County, Indiana* Orange County, New York* Orange County, North Carolina* Orange County, Texas...	California California California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...	116,157
Maricopa County	Arizona Arizona Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...	113,414
San Diego County	California California California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...	102,138
Harris County Harris County Harris County is the name of two counties in the United States:* Harris County, Georgia, just southwest of Metro Atlanta.* Harris County, Texas, the more populous of the two, and the most populous county in the state of Texas....	Texas Texas Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...	99,504
Nassau County Nassau County Nassau County is the name of two counties in the United States:Nassau County, New YorkNassau County, Florida...	New York New York New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...	79,704
Santa Clara County	California California California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...	74,824
Palm Beach County	Florida Florida Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...	71,221
King County	Washington	68,390

Entertainment

Great wealth and its consequences is a popular theme in fiction. The Millionaire was the title of a 1955 TV series about an unseen man of wealth who gave away $1,000,000 to a different person each episode, and a 1931 motion picture about a retired millionaire who buys a gas station to ease his boredom. Millionaire is also a common nickname of the international quiz show

Game show

A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...

, first hosted in the UK by Chris Tarrant

Chris Tarrant

Christopher John "Chris" Tarrant, OBE is an English radio and television broadcaster, now best known for hosting the first version of the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the United Kingdom and later Ireland, as the two national versions of the show merged in 2002.Chris...

, and later in the U.S. by Regis Philbin

Regis Philbin

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin is an American media personality, actor and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. Philbin is often called "the hardest working man in show business" and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera...

and Meredith Vieira

Meredith Vieira

Meredith Louise Vieira is an American journalist, television personality, and game show host. She is best known for her roles as the original moderator of the ABC talk program The View and co-host of the long-running NBC News morning news program, Today...

. Who Wants to Be a Super Millionaire also aired in the U.S., where contestants could win a total of $10,000,000. Many reality television

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

shows offer one million dollars as first prize.