Nearly 1 in 10 LI households millionaires, firm estimates

Long Island has about 1,400 more millionaire households than at this time last year, an upstate market research firm estimates.

And the Island has 437 more “penta-millionaire” households worth at least $5 million, said a report by Phoenix Marketing International of Rhinebeck. The estimate measures “investable” assets such as stocks, bonds and cash savings, and doesn’t include the value of homes and businesses.

In Nassau, households worth $1 million or more represent 10.3 percent of the total — or 46,791, the report said. In Suffolk, the percentage is 9.3, equal to 47,132 households. For the Island as a whole, just under one in 10 households is worth a million dollars, Phoenix estimated.

Phoenix estimated the number of millionaire households by state using the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finance, and data from Nielsen Holdings NV and the Census Bureau.

Independent Long Island economist Irwin Kellner said that large numbers of Long Islanders work in generally high paying jobs in the financial field and in the higher-paying jobs in health care. “I think those two alone would be a very important component,” he said.

At the same time, the U.S. Census Bureau data show another side of the Long Island economic scene: About 7 percent of both Nassau and Suffolk families with children under 18 had income in 2014 less than the federal poverty level, which varies by family size but, for example, was $24,250 a year for a family of four in the contiguous 48 states.

The Phoenix report says New York State has almost 11,000 more millionaire households now than it did a year ago and ranks 15th for the second year in a row among the 50 states in the percentage of millionaire households — just under 6 percent, or 437,889 households.

In 2013, New York held 12th place with 5.79 percent of households, but was passed in 2014 by Vermont, Rhode Island and Washington state.

Maryland had the highest percentage of millionaire households — 7.7 percent. Mississippi had the lowest: 3.94 percent of households. The national average was 5.37 percent, Phoenix said.

In sheer numbers of millionaires, though, New York ranks third after California and Texas, which have 772,555 and 490,634 millionaire households, respectively.