CHICAGO — Six in every 100 households in the Chicago area are worth at least a million bucks, up from the previous year, says a new report.
Research firm Phoenix Marketing International released its annual report on the number of affluent households across the country and found 210,977 households in Chicago and its suburbs had more than $1 million in investable assets in 2015.
That's a slight increase from the previous year, when the Chicago area had 201,249 such households.
The number of "pentamillionaires," which had more than $5 million to invest in 2015, was up 2,000 to about 33,000 households in the Chicago area.
Across the country, the number of pentamillionaires grew by 18,000 to 962,000, according to Phoenix Marketing's PMI Global Wealth Monitor, which compiles data on the affluent.
In the United States, the country added 239,000 millionaire households between 2014 and 2015 for a total of 6.5 million.
The metro area with the most millionaires was New York, which added some 10,000, for a total of 480,000 households, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the report.
In Illinois, the number of households with $1 million in investable assets was pegged at 280,266, up 13,796 from 2014, good for No. 6 in state rankings. However, a Reboot Illinois analysis of the state numbers said Illinois lost 4,000 millionaires between 2013 and 2014.
Income inequality has become a topic in the presidential primaries.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has made it a cornerstone of his campaign, saying in a recent debate that "the reality is that there has been trillions of dollars of wealth going from the middle class in the last 30 years to the top 1/10th of 1 percent."
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said "the opportunity gap is the defining issue of our time" and that "more Americans are stuck at their income levels than ever before."
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Fox News: "We're facing right now a divided America when it comes to the economy. It is true that the top 1 percent are doing great under Barack Obama. Today, the top 1 percent earn a higher share of our national income than any year since 1928."
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