It’s no secret that becoming a billionaire is extremely difficult. The path to a billion dollars continues to change with human innovation. Here’s the breakdown of billionaires by generation…
The Silent Generation was born between 1925 and 1945. The endured The Great Depression and many of them fought in World War II.
Surprisingly, this generation has the lowest amount of self-made billionaires of any generation at just over 65%. 15% of them made their money in finance, which is a popular path to wealth. As you would expect, the further back we go the lower the percentage of female billionaires. Of all the billionaires made in this era, The Silent Generation produced less than 10% female billionaires.
The Baby Boomer generation has arguably had the easiest path to wealth out of any generation. Born between 1946 and 1964, this crop of billionaires has the highest marriage rate, and made more billionaires from the manufacturing industry than any other generation.
Generation X, is where we see the rise of the tech billionaire. Technology produced nearly 25% of all Generation X billionaires, which is a huge increase relative to previous generations. It’s also the generation with the highest percentage of self-made billionaires, the highest percentage of billionaires living outside the U.S., and the lowest percentage of U.S. citizen billionaires.
Millennials are known for the creation of the next generation of technology, and it shows with a shocking 31% of billionaires being made through innovations in technology. You also see the dramatic rise of female billionaires with 19.1%. This nearly doubles the figures of previous generations. Somewhat surprisingly is the fact that Millennial billionaires have the lowest marriage rate, although this could be due to the fact that they are becoming billionaires at younger ages due to the dramatic wealth creation ability of technology.
It’s also worth noting that New York City is no longer the hub for billionaires. As finance plays less of a role, different hubs have been established such as Beijing, China and San Francisco, USA.
