Author

William D. Danko

The marketing professor who co-wrote the study showing that wealth is what you keep, not what you earn.

1 book on BookYol

The story and the impact

William D. Danko is professor emeritus of marketing at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he taught for more than three decades and studied consumer behaviour and the affluent market.

With Thomas Stanley he co-authored The Millionaire Next Door in 1996, contributing the survey design and statistical analysis behind its central finding that most wealthy households live well below their means.

In 2018 he published Richer Than a Millionaire, with Richard Van Ness, extending the earlier research to the question of what wealthy people say makes a life well lived.

The signature

Danko's signature is the method behind the headline: the sampling, the questionnaires and the net-worth formula that let The Millionaire Next Door make a claim about wealth that has been replicated since. His later work adds a second question to the first, asking not only how wealth is built but what it is for.