More than five million people became millionaires across the world in 2020 despite economic damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, the BBC reports.
While many poor people became poorer, the number of millionaires increased by 5.2 million to 56.1 million globally, Credit Suisse research found.
In 2020 more than 1% of adults worldwide were millionaires for the first time.
Recovering stock markets and soaring house prices helped boost their wealth.
Wealth creation appeared to be “completely detached” from the economic woes of the pandemic, the researchers said.
Anthony Shorrocks, economist and author of the Global Wealth Report, said the pandemic had an “acute short term impact on global markets”, but added this was “largely reversed by the end of June 2020”.
“Global wealth not only held steady in the face of such turmoil but in fact rapidly increased in the second half of the year,” he said.
