Walking in New York? A millionaire probably isn’t far away

Benjamin SnyderBy Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

The Empire State Building and lower Manh
The Empire State Building and lower Manhattan can be seen from the 90th story of One World Trade Center in New York, April 30, 2012. New York's skyline got a new king April 30, 2012 after the still unfinished World Trade Center tower, built to replace the destroyed Twin Towers, crept above the venerable Empire State Building. AFP PHOTO / Pool / Lucas JACKSON (Photo credit should read LUCAS JACKSON/AFP/GettyImages)
Photo by AFP—Getty Images

If you walk down the street in New York City, you’re bound to run into at least one millionaire.

A study released by both Spear’s Magazine and WealthInsight, a wealth consultancy company, found that as many as 1 in 25 New York City dwellers, or 389,100 people, are worth seven figures.

That’s the highest proportion of millionaires of any U.S. city.

“New York has long been the bastion of wealth not only in America, but the world,” Oliver Williams, an analyst at WealthInsight, told the Los Angeles Times.

New Yorkers might feel special, but Monaco, the tiny principality in the South of France, has them beat. It boasts a whopping a population of which 29.21% are millionaires (nearly three out of every ten inhabitants). Meanwhile, Zurich and Geneva come in at 27.34% and 17.92 percent, respectively, according to WealthInsight’s list of the top 20 global cities by millionaire density.

How about other U.S. cities? Houston pops in at number 18 on the list, while San Francisco cashes in at number 19. In both places you’re likely to come across someone with a net worth of seven figures in one out of 50 people walking by, or about 2% of the population.

“Favorable tax and outstanding location are important criteria for attracting clusters of millionaires, but so too is ready access to wealth managers and private banks,” said Williams in a statement.

In praise of his company’s efforts, Williams also called a ranking of cities especially important “because wealthy individuals, more than any other group, will change their home and even their domicile based on these factors.”