9 Facts: The Lonely Female Billionaire
Though billionaire females are greatly outnumbered by billionaire men, their combined wealth is still staggering.
January 19, 2015
1. Of the 2,325 billionaires worldwide in 2014, 2,039 – or 88% – of them are men.
2. Only 286 women are billionaires – or just 12%.
3. Still, these 286 female billionaires have a combined net worth of $980 billion.
4. That is an amount larger than the GDP of Indonesia ($868 billion), a country of 252 million people and the world’s 16th-largest economy (as measured in current U.S. dollars).
5. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s female billionaires inherited their entire wealth.
6. By comparison, only 17% of female billionaires are fully self-made.
7. The world’s wealthiest woman is Christy Walton, the daughter-in-law of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
8. Her net worth — inherited upon the death of her husband, John Walton, in 2005 — is an estimated $42 billion.
9. that is about half the $87 billion net worth of the world’s richest person, Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Source: Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014 and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with additional analysis by The Globalist Research Center
Takeaways
Though billionaire females are greatly outnumbered by billionaire men, their combined wealth is still staggering.
The combined wealth of the world’s billionaire women is larger than the GDP of Indonesia.
Nearly two-thirds of the world's female billionaires inherited their entire wealth.
