---
title: Women Are Becoming Billionaires at a Faster Rate Than Men
description: There was an 18% rise in female billionaires, and Asia overtook North America as the region that is home to the highest number of billionaires.
authors:
  - name: Alix Langone
    url: https://money.com/author/alix-langone/
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published: '2018-05-16T16:07:06.000Z'
modified: '2024-04-17T10:28:37.000Z'
section: Business
tags:
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word_count: 184
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![FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit - Day 2](https://img.money.com/2018/05/gettyimages-184794054.jpg)
*Founder of Spanx Sara Blakely speaks onstage at the FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit in 2013*

The number of female billionaires grew faster than the number of male billionaires in 2017, according to a new a survey.

Last year saw an 18% increase in the number of [female billionaires](https://money.com/alexandra-katharina-andresen-worlds-youngest-billionaires/) globally, compared to a 14.5% increase in the number of male billionaires, the wealth intelligence firm Wealth-X said in its annual [Billionaire Consensus](https://www.wealthx.com/report/the-wealth-x-billionaire-census-2018/). After that upswing, women represent 11.7% of the world's population of billionaires.

The [growth of female billionaires](https://money.com/richest-women-in-america/) comes at a time when billionaire wealth is rising overall. The wealth controlled by billionaires spiked 24% last year, according to Wealth-X. Another shift in billionaire demographics? Asia is now home to more billionaires than any other region in the world, having [surpassed North America](https://money.com/the-10-richest-people-in-america/).

"While the U.S. remained the dominant force for this increase, six of the top ten countries recorded faster growth than the U.S. in their respective billionaire populations," the Wealth-X study said.

Right now, there are 2,754 billionaires worldwide, a 15% increase from 2015.

Wealth-X credits the growth in the billionaire population to the overall strength of the world economy and the expansion of industries like technology.

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