Hmm .. it would be really interesting to check out, how many of today's billionaires inherited most or part of their wealth and how many made it big starting from modest backgrounds.
Any pointers folks?
Any pointers folks?
The Millionaire Next Door claims that 80% of millionaires in the USA are the first generation in their family to be rich.[2]
I also did my own research looking at (non-Forbes) biographies of the top 10 richest people in the world according to Forbes in 2009. 3 out of 10 came from millionaire or richer families (Eike Batista, Bernard Arnault, Stefan Persson).
If you trust Forbes, you can simply go through their website[3], it classifies each billionaire's wealth as self-made, inherited, or inherited + grown.
[1]: http://www.economist.com/node/17929057
[2]: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-Millionair...
[3]: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_Carlos...
For the rest, it depends on where you want to draw the line for "modest backgrounds". For example, which side does Bill Gates fall on? He's certainly more self-made than Christy Walton, in that he inherited only millions, not billions. But having a multi-million trust fund from your bank-founding grandfather, and a mother who's on several boards of directors, is still considerably above the median in terms of winning the birth lottery (http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/).