2000
Global Wealth Report 2014_21
APAC and Middle East region has done rather poorly. For most of the period, the growth record mimics the rest of the world – better than North America, but less impressive than Africa, Europe or Latin America. Since 2011, however, the number of millionaires in APAC and the Middle East has fallen every year. This is in stark contrast to the annual rise in millionaire numbers in the rest of the world, and in all regions outside APAC and the Middle East most of the time. This unexpected outcome can again be traced to the lackluster performance of East and Southeast Asia and, in particular, Japan. Figure 12 shows that East and Southeast Asia is the only underperforming sub-region. The number of millionaires in China has risen by a multiple of 28, with the financial crisis causing only a minor pause in the seemingly inexorable rise. Numbers have also grown impressively – by a factor of 11 – in the Pacific sub-region, and Central Asia is not far behind. However, the other sub-regions appear to have struggled to maintain the momentum of the early years of the century, with India and the Middle East failing to return to the peak numbers recorded prior to the crisis. Looking in more detail at millionaire trends, Figure 13 displays the results for individual countries, excluding China since it is so far ahead of the rest. Indonesia did surprisingly well for most of the period, outperforming all other countries in APAC and the Middle East apart from China, until the economic reversals of the past 12 months. However, the exceptionally high growth in millionaire numbers in Indonesia also reflects a significant rise in wealth inequality since 2008, which we document later in this report. As was the case with median wealth, Japan and Hong Kong lag other Asian countries, acquiring relatively few extra millionaires this century. In fact, the number of millionaires in Japan fell below the 2000 level for much of the period. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates are countries which, along with Hong Kong, have not seen the number of millionairesJapan return to the levels recorded in 2007. Taiwan The marked differences Australia in millionaire growth Hong Kong impact on the rates have inevitably had a significant Korea residence pattern of millionaires in Asia. Figure 14 China captures the change that hasIsrael occurred. At the turn of the century, Japan hostedSingapore 2.1 millionaires, more India than three quarters of the total resident in APAC Rest of region and the Middle East. The Japanese number has now grown to 2.6 million according to our estimates, but its regional share has halved to 39%. China’s share has risen ten-fold to 18% and Australia’s share four-fold to 17%. Representation in Korea, India and Singapore has roughly doubled, but the share has remained constant in Taiwan and fallen in Hong Kong. Indonesia, New Zealand and Turkey are three new countries with at least 1% of the regional millionaire total, the threshold we use for a separate listing in Figure 14.
Figure 13
Number of millionaires by country, 2000–2014 (base year 2000 = 100) Source: James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks, Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014
1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Australia Turkey
Indonesia Saudi Arabia
Vietnam New Zealand Hong Kong Japan
Korea
India
Singapore
Figure 14
Millionaires by country, 2000 and 2014 Source: James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks, Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014
2000 Japan Taiwan Australia Hong Kong Korea China Israel Singapore India Rest of region
2014
Japan China Australia Taiwan Korea Singapore India New Zealand Hong Kong Israel Indonesia Turkey Rest of region