Amid Asset Boom, Half of Americans Are Falling Behind in Retirement Wealth by Michael S. Fischer - ThinkAdvisor
What You Need to Know
- Much of the U.S. population has been unable to meaningfully benefit from the boom in asset prices since 2000.
- The share of U.S. household wealth held by the top 10% is approaching two-thirds,
- Real pension entitlements per household increased slightly faster for Black and Hispanic households from 1989-2021 than for white ones.
Over the past three decades, American families in the bottom half of the wealth distribution have made little progress in accumulating assets and saving for retirement, according to the Economic Innovation Group’s analysis of the latest data from the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts, which merges data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Financial Accounts of the United States.
As a consequence, large segments of the U.S. population have been unable to meaningfully participate in and benefit from the boom in asset prices underway since 2000.
The EIG’s analysis showed that the bottom half’s share of national asset holdings fell from 7.2% in 1989 to 5.3% in 2021. Meanwhile, the share of household wealth held by the top 1% increased from 20.8% to 29%.
The share of all household wealth in the U.S. held by the top 10% is now approaching two-thirds, according to the analysis.
