Millions become millionaires during Covid pandemic

Despite economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic, more than five million people became millionaires across the world in 2020. 

In 2020 more than 1% of adults worldwide were millionaires for the first time. Recovering stock markets and soaring house prices helped boost their wealth, reports the BBC.

While many poor people became poorer, the number of millionaires increased by 5.2 million to 56.1 million globally, Credit Suisse research found. Wealth creation appeared to be "completely detached" from the economic woes of the pandemic, the researchers said.

Anthony Shorrocks, economist and author of the Global Wealth Report, said the pandemic had an "acute short term impact on global markets", but added this was "largely reversed by the end of June 2020".

"Global wealth not only held steady in the face of such turmoil but in fact rapidly increased in the second half of the year," he said.

However, wealth differences between adults widened in 2020, and Shorrocks said if asset price increases, such as house price rises, were removed from the analysis, "then global household wealth may well have fallen".

"In the lower wealth bands where financial assets are less prevalent, wealth has tended to stand still, or, in many cases, regressed," he said.

"Some of the underlying factors may self correct over time. For example, interest rates will begin to rise again at some point, and this will dampen asset prices."

Total global wealth grew by 7.4%, the report said.

Since the start of the 21st century, the number of people with wealth between $10,000 and $100,000 had more than tripled in size from 507 million in 2000 to 1.7 billion in mid-2020.

They said the increase reflected the "growing prosperity of emerging economies, especially China, and the expansion of the middle class in the developing world".