Data shows there are 185,000 New Zealanders who've hit international 'millionaire' status

Thursday, 7 November 2019

This story was first published in November

About 4 per cent of all New Zealanders are millionaires in US dollar terms – a rate that lags behind the United States but is ahead of other countries such as Japan and Germany.

The data is contained in a recent global wealth report by Credit Suisse, which said there were 48.8 US dollar millionaires worldwide in mid-2019 up from 13.9 million at the start of the century.

It said there were 185,000 New Zealanders who were worth at least US$1m (NZ$1.57m). Just over half of all New Zealanders are worth more than US$100,000.

That compares to 18.6 million millionaires in the United States – about 5.6 per cent of its 327.2 million population.

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The United States accounts for 40 per cent of US dollar millionaires worldwide.

Credit Suisse said there were 185,000 New Zealanders who were worth at least US$1m (NZ$1.57m).

Economist Cameron Bagrie said New Zealand's share of millionaires would be high as a proportion of population because of the country's expensive houses. The report noted a lot of the growth in wealth in this country was because of growth in asset prices.

Brad Olsen, an economist at Infometrics, said he expected New Zealanders would continue to become richer.

'Wages continue to grow at pace and house prices are continuing to rise, making those with housing assets in effect richer, and our export earners are all contributing to further growth.

'However, the question is if everyone's sharing in this added richness? Net worth data from Stats NZ highlights that the net worth of the bottom 40 per cent of New Zealanders is broadly the same as it was a few years ago, even as those in the top 20 per cent have seen an increase in their net worth.'

He said it was interesting to note the changes in the number of people earning over $150,000 a year.

'Tax data from Inland Revenue highlights that the number of earners who earnt over $150,000 a year has risen from 19,240 in 2001 to 110,650 in 2018, and the number of people earning $250,0p00 has gone from 5470 to 32,430. As a proportion of all earners, in 2001, just 0.64 per cent of all earners made over $150,000 a year. In 2018, that figure rose to 2.87 per cent.'

The Credit Suisse report noted that China's economic progress had enabled it to replace Europe as the principal source of global wealth growth, and supplant Japan as the country with the second-largest number of US dollar millionaires.

But the 4 million millionaires there were a small proportion of the total 1.386 billion population of China.

In the year to mid 2019, the report said the number of new millionaires was also relatively modest, up 1.1 million to 46.8 million.

The United States added 675,000 newcomers, more than half of the global total. Japan and China each contributed more than 150,000, but Australia lost 124,000 millionaires following a fall in average wealth.

Credit Suisse said there were 55,920 adults worldwide worth at least US$100m. Of those, 4830 had assets above4 US$500m.

Half of the world's richest people were in North America.

Global wealth is predicted to rise by 27 per cent over the next five years.

In the Asia-Pacific region, excluding India and China, the number of millionaires is expected to increase from 7.5 million to 11.05 million.

New Zealand has 0.4 per cent of the world's top 1 per cent wealth-holders, despite only having 0.1 per cent of the global population.

Stats NZ said that between 2015 and 2018, the median household net worth in New Zealand increased from $289,000 to $340,000.

The richest 20 per cent of households had 70 per cent of total household net worth.