US has added 1.1m new millionaires under Obama, says study

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/01/us-new-millionaires-obama


The US has added 1.1 million new millionaires since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, according to a new study. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters

The US has added 1.1 million new millionaires since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, according to a new survey of high-net-worth individuals.

Amid an election campaign that has been defined by fierce fights over the taxation of millionaires and accusations that Obama is anti-wealth, the so-called "1%" of the population grew by 29%, the equivalent of a thousand new millionaires per day, over the president's first three years in office. According to analyst WealthInsight, those high-net-worth individuals now hold assets worth $18.8tn – 34% of total US individual wealth, well above the global average of 29%.

"It doesn't really fit the campaign rhetoric that one side is against the rich and the other is for," said WealthInsight analyst Christopher Rocks. "The total number of millionaires is growing and will continue to grow whether Obama or [Mitt] Romney is elected."

The number of new US millionaires fell following the financial crisis. At the end of 2011 there were just over 5.1m millionaires in the United States – 165,360 fewer than in 2007, before Obama's election and the worst of the financial crisis. The recent rise in stock markets and signs of a recovery in real estate mean the number of millionaires will be back to pre-recession levels by the end of 2012.