Falling Behind Emerging Markets: World Leader No More?

The U.S. is still the largest and most productive economy, but the warning signs are there. The latest is that America is losing its lead in share of millionaires worldwide.  It’s an imperfect measure of economic success, to be sure, but does offer a rough measure of entrepreneurship and economic regulation.  And the score is not good.  Reports Robert Frank in the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. is losing its market share of global millionaires.

The population of millionaires grew five times as fast in emerging markets as it did in the U.S. last year, according to a survey released Tuesday. That was the largest divergence between the U.S. and the big emerging markets since the comparisons were first published in 2003.

The number of millionaires in Brazil, Russia, India and China jumped 19% in 2007, compared with growth of 3.7% in the U.S., its slowest growth since 2002, according to the World Wealth Report, produced by Merrill Lynch & Co. and Capgemini.