With housing prices remaining high, I often wondered who buys these new mega-homes. In my area, a upscale home in a gated neighborhood will set you back over a million dollars:
But the distribution of millionaires by State is quite interesting, with Hawaii having twice the per-capita wealthy as West Virginia. This link has some interesting data on 2006 income levels, organized by State:
Plotted, it looks like this:
For more on the changing demographics of the aging baby boomers, see my notes on the Billionaire Next Door. So far as I know, only one of my High school classmates is a billionaire, but just about everyone who got an advanced degree has earned over a million dollars in their careers:
When studying the projected earnings from an advanced college degree, I was surprised to learn that with inflation, the majority of yuppies will become millionaires.
But how much is a college degree worth? High school graduates can expect, on average, to earn about $1.2 million dollars in lifetime income, while those with a bachelor's degree earn an average of $2.1 million over a 40 year working lifetime.
Today, only one-in-a-million Americans is a billionaire, with less then 500 USA billionaires.