Austria continues to exhibit very unequal wealth distribution: around 400 ultra-high-net-worth individuals—each with more than USD 100 million in financial assets—own 37 percent of Austria’s total financial wealth, the latest Global Wealth Report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows. In contrast, 7.3 million people with less than USD 250,000 each collectively hold only one-third of the country’s financial assets.
BCG projects this divide will deepen: by 2029, the super-rich share is expected to rise to 39 percent, while the “mass market” slice will shrink to 30 percent.
Overall Wealth Slightly Declines
Despite a global stock-market rally, Austrians’ total net wealth fell slightly in 2024 to USD 2.5 trillion (€ 2.17 trillion), down 3 percent year-on-year. Financial assets were almost flat (– 0.3 percent), but real-estate and other tangible assets dropped sharply (– 5.2 percent), the BCG analysis finds.
“Sustained higher interest rates continue to weigh on Austria’s property market, which traditionally represents a very large share of household wealth,” says Michael Kahlich, BCG partner in Zurich and co-author of the study. Roughly two-thirds of Austrian wealth—about USD 1.7 trillion—is tied up in real assets.
Millionaires and Global Context
The number of dollar-millionaires in Austria rose by about 4 percent last year to 50,300. Wealthy investors benefited disproportionately from the financial-markets upswing: “Very affluent investors allocate a larger share of their portfolios to capital-market and high-return asset classes such as private equity,” Kahlich explains. “Less wealthy savers tend toward lower-risk, lower-yield instruments like savings deposits, cash, or insurance.”
Globally, financial wealth climbed 8.1 percent in 2024 to USD 305 trillion, while real assets dipped to USD 268 trillion. North America saw the strongest gains in financial wealth (+ 14.9 percent), driven by robust US stock markets. Worldwide, the report counts some 84,700 super-rich individuals—up from last year—with the largest populations in the US (over 33,000), China (9,200), and Germany (3,900).
