Map Shows Where America’s Richest People Live

The country’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, resides in Texas. But it is California that is home to most of the country’s wealthiest people, the Forbes 400 List shows.
Forbes’ report from October found that the top 400 richest people in America were worth a record $5.4 trillion combined, up nearly $1 trillion from 2023.
A dozen also have $100 billion-plus fortunes, breaking another record.
The report allows us to see which states are the most appealing to billionaires.
The majority of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. live in the states of California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
States including Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Minnesota, and Mississippi had no billionaires who made the Forbes 400 List.
The map depicts the number of billionaires who made it to the Forbes 400 List in each state.
While California has the most billionaires out of the top 400, it does not rank as the richest state, according to U.S. News. Instead, it sits in fifth place, with a median household income of $91,551 across the state.
However, the counties of San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, and Santa Clara are among the wealthiest in the country with a median household income of $140,258, the outlet added.
The richest state per the U.S. News ranking is actually Maryland, with a median household income of $94,991. The state had only five billionaires listed on the Forbes 400 List.
Boston University professor Krishna Dasaratha told Newsweek that this discrepancy can be because billionaires’ wealth levels “tend to be much higher than their consumption levels or taxable income,” meaning that their wealth often doesn’t reach the communities where they live.
He told Newsweek that research suggests that state policies like estate taxes “can help bridge that gap because they are collected as a fraction of wealth.”
Discussing the impact billionaires can have on communities more widely, Professor Dasaratha said that the high wealth levels can “bring risks of disproportionate political influence.”
“One or a few billionaires can spend amounts that are transformational for a candidate or issue,” he said.
Research conducted this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis found that the top 10 percent of households by wealth had $6.9 million on average, and as a group, they held 67 percent of total household wealth.
On the other end of the spectrum, the bottom 50 percent of households had $51,000 on average, and as a group, they only held 2.5 percent of total household wealth.
Professor Dasaratha said wealth inequality “has risen quite dramatically in the past few decades,” with research showing much larger fractions of the nation’s wealth concentrated at the top.
“I don’t see obvious reasons to expect these trends to reverse soon,” he added.
At the top of the Forbes 400 List was Musk with $244 billion. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was second with $197 billion, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was third with $181 billion.
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