Hard work and gumption.
That's the story we tell of how the wealthy elite of the industrial revolution made their fortunes.
Innovation and drive.
That's the story we tell of how the wealthy elite of the post-industrial digital revolution made their fortunes.
If previous generations work hard so that their offspring can have it easy, then mission accomplished for the next set of global billionaires.
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Of the 137 people who became billionaires in the 12 months prior to April 2023, 53 of them inherited a combined $150.8 billion, a new report from Swiss global wealth manager UBS states. That number exceeded the combined $140.7 billion in wealth created by the 84 "new self-made billionaires" during the same period.
UBS says it's the first time in its nine-year history of tracking the wealth of the world's richest people that the new generation of billionaires "accumulated more wealth through inheritance than entrepreneurship."
Despite deciding to collectively hand off enough wealth to end world hunger forever, at least some of the billionaires surveyed by UBS have some misgivings about their heirs unearned fortunes.
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"The main problem with the younger generation is to educate them to be ambitious. They take ambitions for granted, they take important entrepreneurial information for granted, whereas the founding generation has to collect this for themselves and make the best out of it," one of the billionaires surveyed by UBS said.
The Great Wealth Handover has been anticipated for sometime as Baby Boomers age and Millennials and Gen Z come of age. In the U.S., new billionaires who inherited their fortunes were worth an average of $2.2 billion vs. new entrepreneurs who averaged wealth of $1.5 billion.
“This is a theme we expect to see more of over the next 20 years, as more than 1,000 billionaires pass an estimated $5.2tn to their children," Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS, said.
The overall number of billionaires around the world increased by 7% year over year to 2,544. Their combined wealth rose by 9% to $12 trillion, according to UBS, worth more than half of the U.S. $23 billion gross domestic product.
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