Residents of Maryland are raking in the riches, and don’t look to be stopping any time soon.
The state has came in the top spot for the seventh year in a row in a ranking of states with the most millionaires released by New York-based marketing firm’s Phoenix Marketing International on Wednesday. The listing comes as the top 1% of the U.S. continued to add wealth in 2017, now holding more than one fourth (26.2%) of liquid wealth in the country — approximately $9.7 trillion.
“The historic and continuing gains in the capital markets means that the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands continues unabated,” David Thompson, the company’s managing director of affluent practice, said. Some 7.87% of millionaires reside in Maryland, followed by 7.86% in New Jersey, 7.75% in Connecticut, 7.57% in Hawaii, and 7.5% in Alaska, the report concluded.
Why are there so many rich people in Maryland rather than, say, New York? The state, along with nearby Washington, D.C. has some of the highest quotients for high-paying jobs like doctors and people in management according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics by career site Zippia.
The state also has one of the highest shares of residents with graduate degrees — second only to Massachusetts, according to Matt Fellowes, founder and chief executive officer at United Income, investment advisor company based in Washington, D.C.
Maryland also has the 12th largest household size in the country at 2.54 people per household, making it more likely that a household has two earners. Nearly one in five people living in the state had a graduate degree or higher, which is almost 2 times higher than the average among states. “It pays to stay in school, as the saying goes,” he said.
The latest report comes as wealth inequality grows globally: the richest 1% got 82% of the world’s wealth in 2017 while the bottom half of people globally grew no new wealth. This came after, in 2017, the 1% owned more than half of the world’s wealth for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, more people in the U.S. are becoming millionaires: In 2017, households having at least $1 million in liquid wealth increased by 6%. There is now a total about 7.2 million “millionaire households” in the U.S. Households in the U.S. that can be described as “affluent” — having $100,000-plus in investable assets — numbered some 30% of households (38.1 million), but controlled over 91% of wealth.