Billionaires: The Growing Demographic Taking the Global Economy

Prisha Kashvi
Dec 29, 2025
3 min read

Written by Storm Nina Tse

In 1916, J.D. Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire with his renowned oil tycoon. At the time, he had set the world of finance on its ear, changing the meaning and identity of wealth.

Over 100 years later, the iconic “billionaire” is much more common. In April of 2025, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) found there to be 2,919 billionaires worldwide.

While this number may still seem pretty small compared to the roughly 8 billion people that make up the world’s population, the current number of billionaires is higher than it has ever been before. UBS has been collecting data concerning the amount of people achieving billionaire status in the world for 30 years, using the 289 billionaires in 1995 as a benchmark for their research report. Additionally, research shows that the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires stood at approximately $15.8 trillion.

Billionaires have evidently experienced growth in the past few decades, but the question that remains is why?

Well, the majority of billionaires often achieve their fortunes from entrepreneurship or inheritance. In 2025, a whopping 287 officially crossed the threshold into billionaire territory, the second largest number of billionaires created in a year following 2021. 91 of these freshly produced billionaires were inheritors of their wealth, while around 196 of them built up their own businesses.

In recent years, billionaires have been given the tools to thrive and grow their wealth exponentially. In 2021, a post-pandemic U.S. government engaged in high spending and promoted low interest rates in an attempt to boost the economy, creating the perfect environment for a growth in billionaires. According to UBS, 2025 is seeing such a boost in the number of billionaires partly because of the lofty successes of tech companies and of rising stock markets.

Whether billionaires have a positive or negative effect on the economy has been heavily debated, but the truth is, the question is much more complicated than we think. Millions of Americans rely on the companies founded by billionaires. These corporations provide Americans with jobs and services that have gained tons of traction, altering the fabric of current society.

Additionally, billionaires often reinvest their mass amounts of wealth into their companies and the stock markets, expanding their wealth and causing their services to be more efficient and cheaper. Following this, people begin to benefit off of the intense growth experienced by the economy.

However, billionaires also cause an extreme amount of financial inequality, creating a concentration of wealth in the upper class. This leaves the rest of society stripped of the resources they need to participate in economic activity. Moreover, when billionaires gain their wealth through corruption, economic growth is hindered. Unfortunately, the unethical billionaire is far too real, acquiring money through means such as exploitation, nepotism, and tax evasion, profiting off of poor labor conditions and unfair pay.

So why should people know about billionaires? Billionaires and their clear concentration of wealth is essential to discuss because of the amount of economic influence they shoulder. They play strong roles within the current economy, hold immense control over world finances, and are experiencing a notable surge in numbers. Most importantly, It is crucial to discuss the nature of the modern billionaire when learning about our current economy.

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