Half of US households hold 97.5% of national wealth: Federal Reserve
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By late 2024, the top 0.1% of U.S. households saw record wealth gains, while the bottom 50% owned just 2.5% of total wealth, despite slight improvements.
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People shop for shoes in a Nike Store on Black Friday on November 25, 2022 (AP)
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As of the end of 2024, the wealthiest half of American households owned about 97.5% of the national wealth, while the bottom half owned 2.5%, according to the latest figures from the Federal Reserve.
The share of the bottom half saw a slight improvement in their wealth during President Joe Biden's term, rising from 2.2%. The total wealth of 66.6 million households in this group was about $4 trillion by the end of last year, an increase of $1.25 trillion from the previous four years, as reported by Bloomberg.
Over the same period, the wealthiest families in America — 133,000 households that make up the top 0.1% — gained more than $6 trillion in net wealth, mainly due to the rising value of corporate stocks and mutual fund shares.
This group owns about a quarter of all US stocks, roughly half of their wealth, while the private sector owns about a fifth. At the bottom of the distribution, real estate represents a larger share of households' wealth.
The share of the top 0.1% of the population of total wealth reached a record high of 13.8% by the end of the year, compared to 13% in the same period in 2020. The share of the bottom half rose to 2.7% in mid-2022, the highest level in Federal Reserve data dating back to 1989, before dropping back to 2.5%.
The group that saw a decrease in its share of wealth over the past four years is the affluent households in the 90th to 99th percentile. These households experienced a 2.4 percentage point drop in their share of total wealth.
