Billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultra high-net-worth individual. The American business magazine Forbes produces a global list of known U.S. dollar billionaires every year and updates an internet version of this list in real time.[1] The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world's first confirmed U.S. dollar billionaire in 1916.[2]
For other uses, see Billionaire (disambiguation).As of 2018, there are over 2,200 U.S. dollar billionaires worldwide, with a combined wealth of over US$9.1 trillion,[3] up from US$7.67 trillion in 2017.[4][5] According to a 2017 Oxfam report, the top eight richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as "half the human race".[6][7] As of 2021, eight people have reached the status of USD centibillionaires, meaning that each has had a net worth of at least $100 billion.[8]
Education and work experience
Billionaires come from a very wide number of backgrounds. A review of the education and work histories of the top 400 billionaires shows little correlation between education and success. Nearly 30% of billionaires do not have a college degree, greatly exceeding any other educational background. The most common field of university education was finance and economics, which only contributed to a combined 15.5% of billionaire educations.[16][17]
There is little correlation between any university and becoming a billionaire. The top 10 universities produced just 99 of the top 400 billionaires combined, significantly less than the total number of billionaires who were not college educated. Military service produced 21 billionaires, more than any single university.[17]
Very few college-educated billionaires pursued business interests in their field of study, with the exception of computer science majors. All twelve of the twelve computer science major billionaires worked in computer science, while only half of engineers worked in engineering, and less than a quarter of finance and economics majors ever worked in finance or economics. The most common field for billionaires to enter was sales and military service.[17]
Rise of new billionaires
In 2019, 19 people became billionaires. Four were a result of death or divorce, including Julia Koch, and Jeff Bezos's former wife MacKenzie Scott.[20]
From 2014 to 2019, the number of female billionaires grew by 46%. That is more than the number of male billionaires in the same period (39%). As of 2019 there were 233 female billionaires in the world, compared to 160 in 2013.[9]
