Embarrassment of riches
Texas has an eye-popping number of millionaire households
A new report shows that Texas boasts a wealth of millionaire households — the second highest number in the country, in fact.
The report, published by marketing services firm Phoenix Marketing International, indicates Texas had 566,578 millionaire households in 2017. To qualify as a millionaire household, a person or family must have at least $1 million in investable assets.
Texas ranks as the second most populous state in the U.S., so it would stand to reason that the Lone Star State also would be second in terms of the number of millionaire households. (The most populous state, California, ranked first last year, with 885,225 millionaire households.)
However, when you look at the number of millionaire households per capita, Texas sits in the middle of the pack. The report says Texas ranked 23rd last year for the number of millionaire households per capita — 5.66 percent of all households.
While Texas’ per-capita ranking might not be impressive, its growth in the overall share of millionaire households is. The report shows 4.33 percent of Texas households were millionaire households in 2010.
Maryland held down the top per-capita spot in 2017, with 7.87 percent of households falling into the millionaire category. The national average last year was 5.81 percent.
Still, Texas has nothing to be ashamed about in the world of wealth. In 2017, Forbes magazine named 34 Texans to its list of the 400 richest Americans. That’s 8.5 percent of the 400 billionaires identified by Forbes. And there’s likely more Texas billionaires lurking out there.
“There’s certainly plenty of Texans who have deep enough moneybags to be in the Forbes 400 but don’t show up yet because our intrepid reporters … haven’t yet nailed down the numbers beyond a reasonable doubt,” Forbes writer Christopher Helman noted last year.
