Millionaires get clobbered by financial crisis

The millionaires' club in the U.S. became more exclusive last year after a 38 percent drop in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index helped thin their ranks to the fewest since 2003.

Families with a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding primary residences, declined to 6.7 million in 2008, a decrease from 9.2 million a year earlier, according to a survey of 3,750 high net-worth U.S. households conducted by Spectrem Group.

That is the lowest number of millionaires since 2003, when there were 6.2 million people in that category, the Chicago-based consulting firm said Wednesday.

"The culprit is not just the stock market, which we all know has dropped precipitously, but broad declines in the asset classes available to the nation's wealthiest investors," said George Walper Jr., president of Spectrem.

The number of households with a net worth of more than $5 million declined to 840,000 in 2008 from 1.16 million in 2007, a 28 percent drop, according to the study.

Affluent households, which the survey defined as those with net assets from $500,000 to $1 million, fell to 11.3 million from 15.7 million, also a 28 percent decrease, Spectrem said.

The results were based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households throughout 2008 and 750 millionaire households conducted in November and December. Spectrem uses third-party market-research firms to identify wealthy individuals and proprietary models to analyze their data, Walper said.