Is the wealth of the Forbes 400 lists really Pareto distributed?

•The Pareto type I distribution is shown not to provide an adequate fit for Forbes 400 lists.•The beta Pareto distribution is shown to provide an adequate fit for Forbes 400 lists.•Adequacy is assessed using probability plots, quantile plots and rank-wealth relationships.

A number of researchers have studied the wealth distribution of the Forbes 400 lists (for example, Klass et al. (2006)). They argue that the wealth is Pareto distributed. We ask the question: does the Pareto distribution really give a statistically adequate fit? We find other distributions giving statistically adequate fits.