12 Top States for Millionaire Households

You may have millionaires next door because, these days, there are a lot of millionaires. About 18% of U.S. households could be classified as millionaire households, if you include the value of home equity, and millionaire households now make up 25% of the total in one state. For a look at the 12 states with the highest percentage of households in the millionaire category, read through the gallery. What it means: Plenty of people have enough net worth to keep a financial professional busy. The data: Many articles about the U.S. millionaire population rely on a Wikipedia article summarizing 2019 survey data compiled in 2020 by Phoenix Marketing International, a market research firm that was acquired by MarketCast in 20222. The Federal Reserve Board makes detailed household net worth information available through its Survey of Consumer Finances data access tool, but not state-level household net worth information. The U.S. Census Bureau now uses $500,000 and up as its top state-level net worth category, and the Internal Revenue Service uses $11.4 million as its minimum state-level net worth category. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission once used a related figure — $1 million in household net worth excluding the value of the primary residence — to distinguish sophisticated, "accredited investors" from ordinary investors. The SEC is now trying to increase the cutoff, because the percentage of households that qualify as accredited investor households based on net worth climbed to 12.5% in 2022, from 1.7% in 1983, when the current rules were adopted. The SEC noted that it's had a hard time finding comprehensive net worth data. Our numbers: We combined the latest Census Bureau state-level household asset distribution figures, for 2021, with the latest IRS state wealth tables, which are based on 2019 tax returns, to come up with state-level millionaire household count estimates. We increased the household millionaire counts by 10% to adjust for income growth since 2019. In some cases, we were unable to come up with millionaire household estimates because of lack of detailed Census Bureau net worth data for some states, such as Delaware and North Dakota. The list of factors that could throw off our millionaire household counts includes estimation errors, state-to-state variations in inflation in income inflation and the IRS individual wealth reporting lag.