The image of the billionaire as a tax nomad in a permanent search of the best taxation It is widespread, but the data tells another story in which millionaires are much more reluctant to move countries, although not cities.
A academic study recently has systematically analyzed where more than 3,100 billionaires around the world with assets exceeding $1 billion are born and live. The result is that, rather than large exoduses, the map shows stable patterns of wealth compaction. The mobility existsbut it tends to concentrate in already consolidated centers of economic power.
Mobility exists, but it is local. The most relevant data from the study is that 81.6% of the billionaires analyzed live in the same country in which they were born. Just throw an eye on the map in which the study data is represented to realize that the international migration of large fortunes is visible, but not the majority.
The main movement occurs within the countries. Only 23.3% of the 3,100 great fortunes analyzed by the study reside in their hometown, which indicates a habitual movement towards the large national economic capitals. The first step of these millionaires (and in many cases the only one) is not usually to cross borders, but rather to approach the economic capitals of their respective countries, where companies and networks of influence are concentrated.
Large metropolises as historical centers of wealth. In Western Europe and the United States, the concentration is articulated around cities with a long financial tradition and business. London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco are the clearest examples.
All of them They combine deep financial ecosystems, access to capital, legal certainty and global networks. London stands out for its high percentage of foreign-born billionaires, while New York has remained an example of a pole of attraction for local millionaires. According to published the luxury magazine Sperar’sthree out of every 100 millionaires are from New York (3.09%), while only 1.25% were born in London. In both cases, the logic is the same: wealth tends to settle where it already exists infrastructure to manage and multiply it.
The internal migration of millionaires in the US is concentrated in the main economic centers: New York, Miami, Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco
Asia and the Middle East: two different concentration models. Asia presents a slightly different pattern. On the one hand, in economies such as China, India or South Korea, the majority of billionaires maintain their residence in their country of origin, with a limited international mobility. The concentration occurs above all internally, in large financial and technological capitals such as Seoul, Mumbai, Beijing, Shanghai or Singapore, reinforcing internal development, rather than global networks.
The Middle East, on the other hand, introduces a clear anomaly on the global map of migrations in great fortunes. Countries like the United Arab Emirates, and especially Dubai, stand out for having become a magnet for billionaires born outside the country, something rare outside the West. Of the 17 billionaires that the study registers as residing in Dubai, only 4 were born there.
Spain: concentration of capital in large cities. Spain fits well into the general pattern of the study. The majority of Spanish billionaires reside in the country, and their mobility is mainly internal.
Madrid and Barcelona concentrate a good part of the great fortunes of the country. Madrid stands out as a political, financial and business center, while Barcelona maintains weight in industrial and property sectors. In both cases, residence is usually disconnected from the place of birth. The result is not so much a flight of wealth abroad as an urban centralization, which reinforces territorial imbalances within the country itself, creating points of extreme concentration of wealth.
The real effect: spatial inequality. The most relevant impact of these patterns is not in international flows, but in the territorial concentration of economic power represented in the change of residence of these great fortunes.
When billionaires gather in a few cities, those areas accumulate investment, services and influence, while other regions lose weight. The study does not analyze direct social consequences, but the data helps to understand why certain cities (such as Madrid or Barcelona) they become more expensiveconcentrate opportunities and widen the gap with the rest of the territory.
Still, the pattern is clear: the global economic elite moves less than is often believed, but is extremely concentrated. Both at the level of concentration of capital in very few hands, and at the territorial level.
Image | Billionaire Migration
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