Characteristics of Billionaires

Data from the CORGIS Dataset Project

Author

Skillful Buneary
Barbara Lou, Bridget Wang, Spencer Kane, Grace Xiao, Frank Han

Published

May 2, 2023

Topic and Motivation

Topic:

  • Investigating patterns in the characteristics of the world’s billionaires

Motivation:

  • Our motivation behind investigating these patterns was to see if there are any observable inequities between different demographics.

Research Questions:

  • How do the demographics age and gender play a role in the number of billionaires across the different regions in 2014?

  • Do age and gender also play a role in the inheritance of wealth among billionaires based on the data from 2014?

Introducing our Data

  • Our dataset was created for a working paper in 2016 by Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver for PIIE and compiled from the Forbes World’s Billionaires lists from 1996-2014.
  • It aims to describe the factors related to why or how someone is a billionaire.
  • We filtered the data set to only include data from 2014, which is the most recent year included.
  • Row: Billionaire
  • Column: Attribute
    • name
    • age
    • gender
    • region
    • age_range
    • inheritance

Highlights from EDA

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ℹ Please use `linewidth` instead.

Modeling

Warning: Removed 5 rows containing missing values (`geom_smooth()`).

\[ prop~inherited = 2.3 - 0.063 \times age + 0.0004 \times age^2 -0.31 \times male \]

Hypothesis Testing

RQ Part A: How does the demographic age play a role in the inheritance of wealth among billionaires based on the data from 2014?

Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the proportion of inheritors for older billionaires and younger billionaires.

\[ H_0 = p_1 - p_2 = 0 \]

Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant difference between the proportion of inheritors for older billionaires and younger billionaires.

\[ H_A :p_1 - p_2 \neq 0 \] P-Value = 0.724 is larger than 0.05, we fail to reject the null hypothesis

RQ Part B: How does the demographic gender play a role in the inheritance of wealth among billionaires based on the data from 2014?

Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in proportion of inheritors between male and female billionaires. \[ H_0: p_M - p_F = 0 \]

Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant difference in proportion of inheritors between male and female billionaires.

\[ H_A : p_M - p_F \not= 0 \] P-Value = ~0, is smaller than 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis.

Conclusions + Future Work

Conclusions

  • Concluded there is a significant difference in proportion of inheritors between gender, but not age group.
  • The results suggest gender-based inequities among the ultra-wealthy worldwide.
  • This raises questions about gender inequality in extreme wealth and factors contributing to differences in wealth accumulation between genders.

Future Work

  • Future research should explore sociological and economic reasons behind gender-based disparities in extreme wealth.

  • It could also investigate changes in patterns of characteristics of billionaires over time.