Global Wealth Report 2024 People in these six countries are richer on average than in Switzerland
Global household wealth rose sharply in 2024 - although Switzerland leads in terms of average wealth, the median wealth reveals an uneven distribution.
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- According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, global household wealth has risen by 4.6% - especially in the USA.
- Switzerland remains the wealthiest country with an average of 687,166 US dollars per adult, but shows a more unequal distribution with 7th place in median wealth.
- With 1.1 million millionaires and an increase in wealth even in the middle class, Switzerland has both a high concentration of wealth and growing permeability.
Wealth on the planet is growing - and growing fast: according to the latest UBS Global Wealth Report, global household wealth increased by 4.6% in 2024. This is the second increase in a row, following a decline in 2022. A total of 680,000 new dollar millionaires were added last year - most of them from the USA, where stable exchange rates and booming financial markets acted as growth drivers.
While Europe, the Middle East and Africa were already ahead in terms of wealth growth in 2023, the United States clearly took the lead in 2024. The strong performance of the US stock markets and the robust US dollar ensured massive asset growth in North America.
Switzerland tops the list again
Switzerland is rich - and this is also evident in an international comparison. With an average wealth of 687,166 US dollars (the equivalent of around 561,000 Swiss francs), it once again tops the global ranking. It is followed by the USA, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, according to the report.
However, appearances are a little deceptive: more meaningful for the general population is the so-called median wealth - i.e. the value at which exactly half of the people own more and the other half less. And here a different picture emerges. At 182,248 dollars (around 150,000 francs), Switzerland is only in seventh place.
These countries are ahead in terms of median wealth
Luxembourg, for example, ranks well ahead of Switzerland with a median wealth of 395,340 dollars, followed by Australia, Belgium, Hong Kong, Denmark and New Zealand. These figures show: Wealth in Switzerland may be great - but it is also unevenly distributed.
While in many countries it is primarily the richest who benefit from the economic upturn, Switzerland shows a different pattern: Median wealth rose by a whopping 8 percent last year, as UBS notes in its latest Global Wealth Report. Since 2020, the increase has even amounted to 14 percent.
"This suggests that the middle wealth classes in the population have experienced stronger wealth growth than the higher classes," the big bank analyses - a rare signal of financial permeability in an otherwise highly polarized wealth environment.
Switzerland remains a country of millionaires
Nevertheless, the upper end of the wealth scale also remains remarkable: Switzerland is currently home to 1.1 million dollar millionaires, which corresponds to around 15.7 percent of the adult population - a world record. Only a few countries have a similar density.
Switzerland's gross private wealth is also strikingly structured: 54% is made up of non-financial assets such as real estate or land, while just over two-thirds comes from financial assets. The debt ratio is 22% - the third highest in the world after Finland and Norway.
And a further transfer of wealth is on the horizon: According to UBS, over 270 billion dollars could be inherited in Switzerland in the coming decades - a development that is likely to have another massive impact on the wealth structure.
