The Emilli arrive. Who am I these? If the term can make you think of insects or fantasy characters, it is actually an acronym that stands for “Everyday Millionaires”: natural persons with an available heritage (liquidable and investable activities) between one and five million dollars. Their number, in the world, is more than quadrupled in this first quarter of a century, reaching 52 million individuals.
According to the Ubs Global Wealth Report 2025, Emilli hold 107 thousand billion dollars (therefore the average of the assets is around 2 million euros) and are about to overtake the most restricted but richer category of those who boast a heritage of over 5 million dollars: in fact, they hold assets for 119 thousand billion. In other words, the Emilli represent the very high band of that middle class that has managed to increase its wealth thanks above all to two macro trends: the increase in real estate prices and the prices of the financial markets. At the basis of this trend there is naturally savings, and this is the most so for a country like Italy, whose citizens are traditionally careful to spend less than they earn, when wages allow it. Certainly, those who in the last 30 years have invested in properties, also indebted to a lot, found themselves having exploited an extraordinarily virtuous situation: low mortgage rates; increases in the value of the regularly higher properties of interest rates; exemptions and tax breaks on the first home; tax credits on renovations and innovations.
The UBS report, mine of numbers and information, also shows how the Emilli and in general the richest part of the population represents the economic security of the generations that overlook, in this century, in a more difficult labor market and with more uncertain social security perspectives. For example: in the USA the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) have a net heritage of over 83,000 billion dollars, far exceeding Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980), the Silent Generation (before 1946) and the Millennial (1980-1996). Well, in the next 20-25 years, a transfer of wealth is expected to be higher than the total detained by the baby boomers towards the subsequent generations (with the exception of approximately 9 thousand billion transferred “transversely” between spouses). A passage that if on the one hand is normal subsequent dynamics, on the other it has no precedents for the dimensions of this generational transfer of wealth.
The dark side of this photograph concerns Italy, a country where the contrast between public debt and private wealth is more accentuated than elsewhere.
And where public finance problems have always been resolved by increasing taxes. It is therefore easy to imagine that the medium-high class will remain the longer for a long time. Including the Emilli, which the state already sees from now on as a real value reserve.