The economic crisis has taken a big bite out of America’s millionaires.
The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including primary residence, fell 27 percent to 6.7 million in 2008, down from a record 9.2 million households the year before, according to a new wealth survey.
That is the lowest number of millionaires since 2003, when the millionaire population stood at 6.2 million, according to Chicago-based Spectrem Group’s wealth survey, “Affluent Market Insights 2009.”
Similarly, the number of ultra high net worth households, those with a net worth of $5 million or more dropped 28 percent to 840,000 in 2008, down from 1.16 million in 2007.
“America has a lot fewer millionaires than when this economic crisis began,” said Spectrem President George H. Walper, Jr. “In fact, the 2008 decline to 6.7 million — which reduced the millionaire ranks by 2.5 million households — shrinks this important population close to levels seen in the last recession. The culprit is not just the stock market, which we all know has dropped precipitously, but broad declines in the asset classes available to the nation’s wealthiest investors.”
Affluent households, a broader group defined as those with $500,000 or more in net worth, declined 28 percent in 2008 to 11.3 million, down from 15.7 million in 2007.
The Spectrem report is based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households conducted throughout 2008 and insights from an online survey of 750 millionaire households conducted in November and December 2008.
The margins of error, respectively, for these studies are plus or minus 4.4 percentage points and plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
