Every Qatari is worth roughly $1.3m in state oil savings, dwarfing famously rich Norway.

Name: Every Qatari is worth roughly $1.3m in state oil savings, dwarfing famously rich Norway.
Creator: Sovereign wealth fund reports, national statistics (2026)
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Qatar
$1.3m
UAE
$1.2m
Kuwait
$650k
Norway
$330k
Saudi Arabia
$30k

Sovereign wealth fund assets divided by the number of citizens, in dollars per citizen. These figures are per citizen and exclude the non-citizen majority, since citizens are a minority of Gulf residents. Norway is per resident.

Why this is happening

Gulf states sit on vast resource funds but have tiny citizen populations, so dividing one by the other produces enormous per-head figures.
Expatriate workers, who make up most of the population in Qatar and the UAE, are excluded from citizenship and from the count.
Norway shares its fund across all residents, so its per-head number is calculated on a far larger base.

The take

The richest people on earth by passport are not Western. It is a quirk of dividing huge funds among tiny citizenries.

Source: Sovereign wealth fund reports, national statistics (2026)

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<a href="https://macrosnaps.app/c/gulf-citizen-wealth">
  <img src="https://macrosnaps.app/charts/gulf-citizen-wealth.png" alt="Sovereign wealth fund assets divided by the number of citizens, in dollars per citizen. These figures are per citizen and exclude the non-citizen majority, since citizens are a minority of Gulf residents. Norway is per resident." width="640" style="max-width:100%;height:auto">
</a>
<p style="font:12px/1.5 system-ui,sans-serif;color:#6b7280;max-width:640px">
  Chart: <a href="https://macrosnaps.app/c/gulf-citizen-wealth">MacroSnaps</a>,
  <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>. Source: Sovereign wealth fund reports, national statistics (2026).
</p>

Cite it

Cites MacroSnaps for the chart. For the numbers themselves, cite the source below.

MacroSnaps (2026). "Every Qatari is worth roughly $1.3m in state oil savings, dwarfing famously rich Norway." Edition No. 28, 8 August 2026. https://macrosnaps.app/c/gulf-citizen-wealth

Permanent link: https://macrosnaps.app/c/gulf-citizen-wealth

The underlying data

MacroSnaps drew this chart. The numbers in it are from Sovereign wealth fund reports, national statistics (2026). Their terms, not ours, govern the underlying data.