Who owns American wealth?
As of 2023, the top 1% of American households owned 30 cents of every dollar.
In 2023, 97.5% of all net worth —totaling $139.4 trillion — was owned by the 50% of Americans with above-average net worth. The remaining 167 million Americans owned about 2.6% — or $3.6 trillion.
How much wealth does the top 1% own?
As of 2023, the top 1% of American households owned 30.0% of net worth, or 30 cents of every dollar. This has risen from 22.8% in 1990 and 28.4% at the start of the 2008 recession, but is lower than a 2021 peak of 30.9%.
The total net worth of the top 1% in 2023 was $43.0 trillion.
How is wealth divided in the US?
Components of household wealth, by income quintile, Q1–Q3 2022 average
Each bar outside of the top bar represents an income quintile. The bottom bar is the bottom 20% of earners by income in the US, followed by next 20%, and so on. The top bar represents the top 1% of income earning households in the US, and the next bar represents the rest of the top 20%.
On the right of the chart are assets, which increase household wealth, marked in blue. On the left are liabilities, or debts these households hold, in purple.
Here are three key takeaways from this chart:
1. There is significant wealth inequality, especially at the top of the income bracket.
To simplify, the chart below combines the entire top 20% into one visual. Notice the overall shape.
Wealth inequality is especially high at the top of the income bracket.
Assets and liabilities (in trillions of dollars) of income quintiles, 2022 dollars
Each of these income quintiles contains the same number of households. If wealth were equally distributed, the bars would all be the same length. Instead, this chart shows significant wealth differences between the income quintiles, and the top 20% has markedly more wealth than the other quintiles.
The scale of inequality between the income quintiles grows at the top. The top 20% group has over four times as much wealth as the fourth 20%, which has close to double the wealth of the third 20%. The second 20% has around 1.3 times as much wealth as the bottom 20%.
When separating the top 1%, the inequality at the top is even clearer.
Wealth inequality is especially high at the top of the income bracket.
Assets and liabilities (in trillions of dollars) of income quintiles, 2022 dollars
The above chart shows that the top 1% has more than half the wealth of the rest of the top 20% collectively, despite representing 5.3% as many households.
2. The greatest difference in assets between higher and lower income quintiles is money in stocks and mutual fund shares.
Assets of all types increase further up the income quintiles.
Components of assets by income quintile, 2022 dollars
Further up the income quintiles, real estate and retirement fund wealth increases. However, the starkest difference between income groups is money in stocks and mutual fund shares. Below is a chart of only assets in stocks and mutual funds.
Stocks and mutual funds are most associated with wealth.
Assets in stocks and mutual fund shares by income quintile, 2022 dollars
The top 1% has more in stocks and mutual funds as the rest of the top 20% combined, despite representing 5.3% of the number of households.
The differences in scale continue down the income quintiles. The top 20% has more than 10 times as much wealth in stocks/mutual funds as the next 20%. The fourth 20% has three times as much wealth in stocks/mutual funds as the middle income quintile.
Those in the second and bottom 20% have similar wealth in stocks and mutual funds, with an average of $16,000 in stock wealth per household.
3. Mortgage debt burdens the middle class the most.
Mortgage debt is the greatest liability across income groups.
Components of liabilities by income quintile, 2022 dollars
For many Americans, their biggest source of wealth is their home. Around 65% of Americans are homeowners. Many households put a significant amount of their wealth into real estate, which is reflected in both assets and liabilities. Mortgages represent the amount of money households still owe for their homes, and the financial burden of these mortgages are highest among the middle 60% of earners (including the second, third, and fourth quintiles).
One way to evaluate the relative size of mortgage debt is taking it as a percentage of overall net worth. Net worth is equal to the total amount of assets owned minus the total liabilities owed.
For the middle 60% of earners, mortgage debt is highest relative to overall net worth. Mortgage debt represents around 13 to 14% of the middle 60% of America’s net worth. People in the bottom 20% are less likely to own homes; mortgage debt represents 8% of their net worth. On the other end of the chart, mortgage debt is 2.5% of the top 1%’s net worth.
Wealth inequality across race: what does the data show?
In the third quarter of 2022, the nation’s white households had $124.5 trillion in assets as measured by the Federal Reserve. In comparison, all Black households had under $8 trillion in total assets, Hispanic households had $5.5 trillion, and all other racial groups combined had roughly $15.7 trillion.
The data collected categorizes the net wealth of each demographic through several asset types, displayed in blue, and three liability types, displayed in pink.
The “other” category contains Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, and multi-race households.
According to the Federal Reserve, white households held more than 80% of the nation's assets in 2022.
Wealth measured in assets and liabilities by race (in trillions), Q3 2022
How do assets and liabilities differ by race?
Using the number of households within each demographic, average assets for the white demographic came to approximately $1.48 million per household.
In descending order, people in the other races category had an average asset distribution of roughly $1.03 million per household, Black people had $425,913 per household, and Hispanic people had $422,884 per household.
Hispanic people had the highest proportion of their assets put into real estate at 49% of total assets.
Black people had the highest proportion of assets put into retirement accounts at 35.2%, compared to 21.5% for Hispanic people and 18.4% for white people.
The white and other race demographics had the highest proportion of assets in stocks and mutual fund shares, at 22.6% and 18.7% on average, respectively. In contrast, the Black and Hispanic demographics had 4.5% and 2.8% of their assets in stocks and mutual fund shares on average, respectively.
White and other households had higher proportions of their wealth invested into corporate equities and mutual fund shares than Black and Hispanic households.
Average assets per household by race and category, Q3 2022
Conversely, average household liabilities varied across these groups.
People of other races had an average of $158,803 in liabilities per household, closely followed by white households at $154,399 in liabilities, then Hispanic households had $99,203, and Black households at $85,354.
Black households had the largest share of their liabilities in consumer credit debt out of all measured groups.
Average liabilities per household by race and category, Q3 2022
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