Wealth Distribution In America

In keeping the commitment we made to our readers in the post, America’s Perilous Path Of Wealth Distribution,  we follow up with some additional and interesting data on wealth distribution in the United States.    If you haven’t read Sunday’s post, run don’t walk to gather some background for the following data.  See here.

Here’s the summary section,

Summary

• We illustrate the stark contrast in the growth of household wealth between the different percentile groups since Q1 2000
• The top 1% of households now hold more wealth than the bottom 90%
• The aggregate nominal wealth of the bottom 50% of households has fallen by almost 10 percent since 2000, from 3.4 percent of total household wealth to just 1.3 percent
• The share of the top 1% is now over 31 percent and has grown by over 165 percent since Q1 2000
• The average wealth per household of the bottom 50% has declined 25 percent in nominal terms and 50 percent in real purchasing power compared to the 1%’s increase of 118 percent and 50 percent, respectively
• The widening wealth gap is a major factor in the rise of populism in the U.S. and the debate over a wealth tax will be a central focus of the 2020 presidential election
• Asset inflation resulting from quantitative easing (QE) has contributed to the widening wealth gap

The following tables illustrate and present the aggregate wealth data from the Fed’s new Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA).  Note we use the terms “wealth” and “net worth” interchangeably.

Wealth Distribution By Percentile