This came up the other day, so I figured I’d note the answer(s) down and share it with you so we don’t have to look this up in the internet again until 2013 is over. The, I think they get new richest people. Most of these answers come from Forbes, which appears to be in charge of knowing these things. Or even, perhaps, determining these things!

Who is the richest person in the world?

The richest person in the world is Carlos Slim Helu and his family, with a net wort of 73 billion dollars. He’s in Mexico, and in the telecom business. But since this includes “his family” we may want to note that the number two perso on the list is Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame, who is worth 67 billion dollars. I will note that the fifth richest person in the world is a guy who is the brother of someone I know. Fat lot of good that does me, I know, but still.

Who is the richest woman in the world?

We have to go down the list pretty far to find the richest woman in the world. Liliane Bettencourt and family are listed by forbes as the 9th richest “person” in the world, she’s in france and is the “L’Oreal Bettencourt. Christy Walton and Family are at number 11. We have to go down to number 16 before we find a woman who is not “and family” rich, and that’s Alice Walton of Wal-Mart. Note that CHristy Walton and Family and Alice Walton (sans family) are both Wal-Mart. We can add Jim Walton and S. Robson Walton to that list and the Wal-Mart family, extended, appears to be worth a total of 107.3 billion dollars. Ironically, that makes the value of at least this part of the Wal-Mart family worth about the same as Bangladesh. If they were a country they’d be about 57th.

Who is the richest person in America?

The richest person in America is obviously Bill Gates (see above)

Who is the richest woman in America?

The richest woman in America is the Wal-Mart lady mentioned above.

The average number of offspring (we can use this as an estimate of fertility rate) among the top richest people is 3.0. The fertility rate of the average American at the moment is about 2.03.

A lot of people assume, because they’ve been told this and accepted it uncritically, or for other reasons, that the poor and dark skinned have more babies than the rich and the light skinned. Apparently not.