4 Things I Learned About the 100 Richest Americans Using Knowledge Graphs
When Forbes releases its yearly list of the world’s gazillionaires, many of us drop what we are doing and gawk at the ever-growing net worth of the world’s corporate and financial elite. But beyond the many zeroes, I wondered: what can we actually learn from the richest people, and how they made it big??
I’ve come to rely on knowledge graphs as a powerful tool for extracting insights from raw data, so I decided to use them to take a deeper dive into the 100 Richest Americans.
Titans of Industry
Industry matters when it comes to building a company and growing wealth: Retail, Financial Services & Investments, and Tech is where the money is at. Each of the three industries has over 20 billionaires, and combined account for 75% of the wealthiest Americans.
The Retail industry has birthed the most billionaires, at 27 individuals. However, those that have made their fortunes in Tech have the highest combined net worth — 23 individuals have a combined net worth of $1.017 Trillion (Yes, with a “T”).
If your goal is to become a billionaire, the data suggests you should go into Retail. Unless your main concern is how many billions, then I would recommend checking out Tech.
Lessons From Inside — and Outside — the Classroom
It is no surprise that educational elitism trickles down from the top — I had previously explored the necessity of being a male Ivy League graduate to participate in SPACs. After all, 40% of America’s richest attended an Ivy League school. Including Stanford, that number rises to 50%.
There is a reason these top universities have the reputation, and endowments, that they do: 15 of the 100 richest American’s attended Harvard, 10 Stanford, and 9 The University of Pennsylvania.
I chose the word “attended” very deliberately, as 11% of the wealthiest Americans dropped-out of their universities before graduating. Harvard and New York University have the highest dropout rates, each with 3 now-billionaires withdrawing prior to graduation.
All of these drop-out billionaires are male and account for $365.8 Billion, or 13.72% of the total net worth of all 100 richest Americans. They clearly learned enough outside of the classroom to become titans of industry in their own respective fields without the need for a degree.
D.I.Y.
The vast majority of America’s 100 richest people “did it themselves” — 72% earned their fortunes from their efforts as a founder, investor, CEO, or co-founder.
28 of the top 100 inherited their fortune from their family or spouse, 19 of which are from the Retail industry. Most of the Retail companies are family brands, explaining the abnormally high percentage of inherited wealth.
Most interesting, however, is that the gender ratio is 4:3, male to female, of those that inherited their wealth. This is significantly higher than the overall gender ratio of 43:8, male to female, of the top 100 richest Americans.
The gender gap persists even among the nation’s wealthiest, in other words, as the majority of women earned their fortunes the old fashioned way: through marriage or inheritance. But among those lucky enough to inherit billions of dollars, there are still 25% fewer females than males.
Small Circles
As the saying goes, “keep your circle small” applies to more than just the social circles America’s richest interact with — it also pertains to the distribution of wealth. A select few at the top of the 100 Richest Americans list possess the vast majority of wealth.
The top 7, all worth over $100 billion, hold almost 34% of the wealth of the 100 richest Americans. Their combined net worth falls a *mere* $100 billion short of $1 Trillion, at $902.5 Billion. All together, the 100 richest Americans have a total net worth of $2.66 Trillion.
In summary, the 4 key takeaways from building knowledge graphs to analyze the 100 wealthiest Americans:
- Retail is the industry with the most billionaires, but those in Tech have the highest combined net worth.
- In theory, the smarter you are the richer you are — 40% of the richest Americans attended an Ivy League college. However, some of them found more value outside the classroom and dropped out. All of these drop-out billionaires are male and account for $365.8 Billion, or 13.72% of the total net worth of all 100 richest Americans.
- 72% of the richest Americans are self-made, while 28 of the top 100 inherited their fortune from their family or spouse, 19 of which are from the Retail industry. Even among those that inherited their wealth, there are 25% fewer females than males.
- The 7 wealthiest Americans hold 34% of the top 100 fortunes.
If you are interested in learning how to derive critical insights using KgBase’s no-code knowledge graphs, check out more here.
