Top 10 States With Most Millionaires Per Person: 2018

Millionaire households, those with $1 million or more in liquid wealth, increased by 6% and now total about 7.2 million households in the U.S., according to a new study from Phoenix Marketing International.

The study also found that the wealthiest Americans are overwhelmingly concentrated in states that were carried by Democrats in at least three out of the four past presidential elections. Seventeen of the top 20 states that Phoenix ranked by household liquid wealth are largely Democratic.

The recently passed tax reform bill, which puts new limits on itemized deductions of state and local income and property taxes, or mortgage interest, can be expected to negatively affect these predominantly Democratic blue state residents more than those in mainly Republican red states, Phoenix noted in a statement.

Phoenix developed sizing estimates in the U.S. by using a combination of sources, including the Survey of Consumer Finance and Nielsen-Claritas. The SCF provided the framework to determine the general distribution of households by their level of investable assets. These estimates were further refined with age and income distributions provided by Claritas.

The study found that as of mid-2017, the top 1% of U.S. households, those having $5 million or more in investable assets or liquid wealth, increased by 8% to more than 1.1 million.

Among the top 10 states with the highest concentration of these “pentamillionaire” households, Alaska was the sole red state.

The study also showed that the top 1% of households added some $214 billion in wealth over the past year, and now control 26.2% of the liquid wealth in the U.S., or about $9.7 trillion.

According to the study, the concentration of wealth in the U.S. continued to accumulate at the top of the wealth pyramid in 2017. Affluent U.S. households, those having $100,000 or more in investable assets, accounted for some 30% of households, 38.1 million, but controlled over 91% of wealth.

“The historic and continuing gains in the capital markets means that the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands continues unabated,” David Thompson, managing director of the affluent practice at Phoenix Marketing International, said in a statement.

“We were surprised to find that pentamillionaires are living in an overwhelming preponderance of blue states. Given all of the talk about rich Republicans, we would have expected to see more red states on the list.”

Following are the top 10 states for households with $1 million or more in investable assets, according to Phoenix Marketing International.

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