If Bill Gates pops up in your mind when you envision wealth, you’re spot-on. It turns out that Gates is the prototype for the rich: a self-made male boomer entrepreneur. He’s even the exact age of the median global billionaire—67, according to information service Altrata's 2023 Billionaire Census report (that's coincidentally also the age of millionaire icons like Kris Jenner, Bill Nye, and Whoopi Goldberg). The report consulted the Wealth-X Database for the census, using a prosperity valuation model to measure assets while looking at the finances, careers, education, and more of ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
It found that billionaires under 50 represent just 10% of the cohort, while billionaires over 70 comprise 40% of it. In general, women are underrepresented in the billionaires’ club, making up less than a fifth of the cohort, though they’re slightly more represented in the groups of younger ultrawealthy individuals. Like Gates, who was once the world's youngest self-made billionaire, a majority of billionaires are self-made; the 50-to-70 age group makes up 64% of this cohort. But unlike Gates, who made his billions in tech, most billionaires, especially those ages 50 to 70, amassed their wealth through banking and finance.
That the most common billionaire is a self-made man in his late sixties with a financial background makes sense: Older people have more time to build wealth, and baby boomers (men in particular) have had not only a longer, but easier road to their riches.
“While the vast majority of self-made billionaires will have launched their first venture at a relatively young age, it is rare for an individual to enter this exclusive wealth tier before their 40th birthday,” write the authors of the report, adding that there hasn’t been a major wealth distribution in the past five years and that, if anything, the average age of billionaires has increased a bit during this time.
Unless you’ve inherited wealth (which was twice as likely for billionaires under age 50 than their older peers), they write, it takes “considerable time” to make enough riches to reach billionaire status. After all, billionaires make up less than the 1% of the ultrawealthy demographic but hold 34% of that demographic's wealth, according to Altrata.
The inequity that leads to billionaire status has led to some pushback from ultra-high-net-worth individuals themselves; consider the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy individuals including Abigail Disney, who call for taxation on the rich. It’s become an especially hot-button topic in the U.S., home to the largest population of billionaires in the world, Altrata finds, and where the number of millionaires continues to increase while others find it difficult to stay afloat during a time of high inflation.
Building wealth has also been a smoother ride for baby boomers, who inherited a sweeter deal than the younger generations that came after them. Millennials and Gen Z have had a much harder time building wealth thanks to student debt, stagnant wages, and ill-timed recessions. It’s made achieving the American Dream all the more difficult, especially in a challenging housing market where many believe their dreams of one day buying their own home to be impossible. While boomers have also had their share of inflation and recessions, the economy was more like a game set on easy mode for the generation, who benefited from less expensive education as well as lower interest rates and inflated housing prices that them build assets more easily.
While millennials finally made some wealth gains during the pandemic, boomers were still worth almost eight times as much as they are—seemingly another win for the billionaire boomers like Gates.
