A record-breaking boom at the very top is colliding with a quiet exodus of ultrawealthy families who trust U.S. markets more than they trust U.S. life, pushing them to invest in America while raising their children abroad.​

The global wealth ladder has never been more top‑heavy, with the 500 richest people adding an unprecedented $2.2 trillion to their fortunes in 2025 and lifting their combined net worth to about $11.9 trillion. Bloomberg reporter Dylan Sloan, who tracks these fortunes via the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, notes that roughly a quarter of those gains came from just eight individuals as Big Tech and AI euphoria drove markets higher.​

Below the billionaire tier, “everyday millionaires” have surged from just over 13 million at the start of the millennium to nearly 52 million by the end of 2024, more than quadrupling in nominal terms and more than doubling after inflation. Yet many of these households feel “poor” in practice, caught in new, unstable economic classes where rising paper wealth does not reliably translate into security or contentment.

Capital loves America, people hedge with Europe

UBS’s latest Billionaire Ambitions Report shows global billionaire wealth hitting roughly $15.8 trillion in 2025, powered by 196 new self‑made billionaires adding about $386.5 billion and heirs inheriting a record $297.8 billion in a single year. Nearly 3,000 billionaires now sit atop this mountain of capital, and a large share still directs investment flows toward North America.​

But enthusiasm is softening at the margins. The proportion of ultrawealthy respondents who see North America as the best short‑term opportunity for returns has dropped from 80% to 63%, while about four in 10 now view Western Europe as offering the greatest opportunity over the next 12 months. Over longer horizons, however, 65% of surveyed billionaires still rank North America as their top destination for returns, only slightly down from 68% the year before.​

Elite success, exported

Some of the most recognizable beneficiaries of this boom are treating U.S. residency as optional even as they keep their capital anchored in American markets. France’s recent decision to grant citizenship to George Clooney, Amal Clooney, and their twins highlights the appeal of European privacy protections and a slower, more insulated pace of life. Clooney has shifted his family’s base from Los Angeles to a former wine estate in Provence and has said he believes his children will get a “much better life” there than in the culture of Hollywood.​

He is far from alone. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have decamped to the UK after Donald Trump’s reelection, Rosie O’Donnell has relocated to Ireland, and figures such as Richard Gere, Tom Ford, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have moved homes or primary bases to Europe. In practice, these decisions amount to lifestyle arbitrage—trading American visibility and polarization for European anonymity and social calm while continuing to ride U.S. markets for returns.​

Behind the celebrity moves, official data points to a broader, quieter wave of departures. The IRS “Expatriation List,” which tracks mostly higher‑net‑worth individuals who give up U.S. citizenship, recorded roughly 4,820 renunciations in 2024, up about 48% from 2023 and marking the third‑highest annual total on record. Between 2020 and 2024, about 21,000 high‑net‑worth Americans renounced their citizenship, with only 2016 and 2020 logging higher levels amid Trump’s first election and the onset of the global pandemic.​

UBS finds that more than a third of billionaire families have already relocated at least once, and a similar share are considering a move, driven by quality‑of‑life concerns, geopolitical risk, and tax planning. As these clans stretch across continents and generations, they face a new set of problems—cross‑border governance, inheritance rules, and clashing cultural expectations—turning mobility itself into a central pillar of elite risk management.​

An American Dream that delivers returns—and anxiety

The core tension is that the United States remains unmatched at turning risk into rapid wealth even as many of its greatest winners seek to live out their success elsewhere. In 2025 alone, the country minted 92 new self‑made billionaires worth $179.9 billion, compared with 61 new billionaires and $124.4 billion in Asia‑Pacific and 43 new billionaires with $82.2 billion in Europe. For investors, the American Dream still delivers; for families at the top, it increasingly feels too volatile, too visible, and too politicized to serve as an ideal place to raise children.​

Irish economist David McWilliams argues that this split reflects deeper structural differences: Europe is built to mitigate risk through public health, public schools, and job protections, while risk is “the defining psychological state of the American.” In that light, the new global elite are not abandoning the American Dream so much as rebalancing it—keeping their money in the furnace of U.S. innovation while parking their lives, and their heirs, somewhere that promises fewer fireworks and more sleep.

Source: Nick Lichtenberg, “The world’s richest added a record $2.2 trillion in wealth this year—but they’ve increasingly lost faith in the American Dream”, Fortune