In This Top 10 Ranking of Wealthiest Countries, U.S. Is Absent

Yes, you read that correctly. Admittedly, there’s a bit of interpretation going on—nonetheless, the statement is true. And it doesn’t reflect well on the U.S. overall.

A Business Insider report dove into a Credit Suisse report on global wealth, which by one metric places the U.S. third on the “richest nations” list, and dug a little deeper. Instead of taking the third-place finish at face value, based as it is on ranking countries by dividing their overall wealth by the total population, it decided to take a different approach.

Instead it looked at the median wealth per adult, which paints a very different picture. BI ranked the richest countries where the greatest number of people are rich. BI looked at the Credit Suisse numbers that compared how much wealth the median, or “middle-of-the-pack person” as BI says, has in every country.

In the U.S., the top 0.1% of households own as much wealth as the bottom 90%—which means there really isn’t all that much left over for that bottom 90%. In fact, the U.S. also has the most members of the top 1% global wealth group, boasts 41% of the world’s millionaires and just since 2017 added 878,000 new millionaires to the crop. That’s about 40% of the new millionaires globally.

So this new list doesn’t rank the United States in the Top 10. In fact the U.S. is No. 18, and lags behind Canada and France.

Above you’ll find the top 10 wealthiest countries, based on median wealth per adult, as well as the 10 wealthiest based on overall wealth divided by population.