Forbes magazine is a magazine best know for its publication, since 1987, of the list and rankings of the world's billionaires. Back in 1987, Forbes could identify only 150 individuals who could be classified as US$ Billionaires mostly from the USA. On the first list published by Forbes, the top four on that list were individuals from Japan. Now, 26 years later, that list has ballooned to 1,426 Billionaires from all corners of the globe.
Recently Forbes published an article showing the geographic spread, by country of origin of these 1,426 Billionaires. What is interesting according to the article is that since the first list was published up to the latest list published for the year 2012, the USA has had the highest representation as a percentage of the total list. For many years, Europe occupied the second spot however, more recently the Asia-Pacific region (led mainly by China) has leap-frogged Europe. Russia and Africa have also seen a rise in the numer of Billionaires appearing on the Forbes list.
Link between Billionaires and University
A rather more interesting list however, is one published by CNBC which ranks the top ten universities with the most Alumni on the Forbes Billionaires list. Harvard University has always been known as the best institution among the Ivy League universities and now it turns out that Harvard has the most number of Billionaires appearing on the Forbes list. All in all, 52 or 3,6% of the world's billionaires have studied at Harvard University. Admittedly, not all of these billionaires went on to graduate, with a few notable ones dropping out to focus on what ended up making them wealthy, Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg is one such individual. The University of Pennsylvania, comes a distant second, having 28 of its former students who feature in the Forbes Billionaires list. Just as the USA has the highest number of Billionaires in the global list, all but one of the top ten universities with the highest number of billionaires as former students, are in the USA. It is clear that the USA is the land of opportunity, whichever way you cut it.
