World gets 1 million new millionaires in 2025

The world's population of millionaires grew significantly in 2025, even as the gap between the rich and the middle class deepened further, according to a new global wealth report.

Nearly one million people worldwide became US dollar millionaires over the course of the year — an average of more than 2,600 new millionaires added every single day.

The findings come from the 17th edition of UBS's Global Wealth Report.

The report found that global personal wealth grew for a third consecutive year, rising 10.8 percent in 2025 — a significantly sharper increase than the growth recorded in either of the two previous years.

Roughly half of the new millionaires were based in the United States, the report found. Despite the overall rise in wealth, median wealth — the figure that best reflects the typical person rather than the wealthiest — declined in most countries tracked in the report, a trend the bank said points to a widening gap between the rich and the middle class.

Iqbal Khan, co-president of UBS Global Wealth Management, said the growth was driven by shifting economic conditions, technological transformation, and new opportunities emerging across various markets.

The report noted that many of the newly minted millionaires did not get there through cash earnings, but rather through rising property and real estate values — meaning their actual disposable income had not increased significantly.

According to the Gini coefficient, the standard measure of wealth inequality, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and South Africa recorded the highest levels of wealth inequality, while Slovakia ranked as the most equal country in the report.

The report further noted that a country can be both wealthy and highly unequal, just as it can achieve prosperity through a comparatively equitable distribution of wealth — meaning that how wealth is distributed matters just as much as how much of it exists.

Taken together, the report paints a picture of a world growing richer at its fastest pace in years, even as that growth increasingly bypasses the households in the middle.

Source: SBS News, UBS Global Wealth Report