The Sunday Read: ‘How Many Billionaires Are There, Anyway?’

<p>America is home to 735 billionaires with a collective worth greater than $4.7 trillion, according to Forbes. There were just 424 billionaires in 2012, Forbes found, and only 243 a decade before that. The billionaires keep multiplying.</p><p>In this article, Willy Staley uses information from the first billionaire count — commissioned in 1981 by the entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes for his own magazine — to consider the reasons behind the rapid increase in American billionaires, but also the changing attitudes on publicizing the details of one’s wealth.</p><p>Many factors enabled American entrepreneurs to amass such enormous fortunes, including the Reagan administration’s policies, the arrival of computer technology, the creation of a more globalized economy and the rise of the developing world.</p><p>Yet despite the conspicuous consumption this level of wealth often encourages, Staley finds that few billionaires want to be discovered. So how do you keep tabs on America’s billionaires?</p><p><i><strong>This story</strong> <strong>was written by Willy Staley and recorded by Audm</strong>. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, </i><a href="https://www.audm.com/?utm_source=nytmag&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=age_old_question_jabr" target="_blank"><i>download Audm for iPhone or Android</i></a><i>.</i></p>