The Distributional Financial Accounts (DFAs) provide a quarterly measure of the distribution of U.S. household wealth since 1989, based on a comprehensive integration of disaggregated household-level wealth data with official aggregate wealth measures. The data set contains the level and share of each balance sheet item on the Financial Accounts' household wealth table (Table B.101.h), for various sub-populations in the United States. In our core data set, aggregate household wealth is allocated to each of four percentile groups of wealth: the top 1 percent, the next 9 percent (i.e., 90th to 99th percentile), the next 40 percent (50th to 90th percentile), and the bottom half (below the 50th percentile). Additionally, the data set contains the level and share of aggregate household wealth by income, age, generation, education, and race. The quarterly frequency makes the data useful for studying the business cycle dynamics of wealth concentration--which are typically difficult to observe in lower-frequency data because peaks and troughs often fall between times of measurement. These data will be updated about 10 or 11 weeks after the end of each quarter, making them a timely measure of the distribution of wealth.
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Distributional Wealth Accounts (DWA) are experimental statistics produced by the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). They complement macroeconomic sector accounts with distributional information for the household sector.
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This table describes the wealth distribution of the sector households in the national accounts over different household groups. Households are identified by main source of income, living situation, household composition, age classes of the head of the household, income class by 20% groups. Data available from: 2005 up to and including 2014. Status of the figures: The figures of 2005-2014 are final. Changes as of June 22nd 2018: None. This table has been discontinued. Statistics Netherlands has carried out a revision of the national accounts. New statistical sources and estimation methods have been used during the revision. Therefore this table has been replaced by table Wealth distribution of households; National Accounts. For further information see section 3. When will new figures be published? Not applicable anymore.
In the first quarter of 2025, almost two-thirds percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth. Income inequality in the U.S. Despite the idea that the United States is a country where hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will inevitably lead to success, this is often not the case. In 2023, 7.4 percent of U.S. households had an annual income under 15,000 U.S. dollars. With such a small percentage of people in the United States owning such a vast majority of the country’s wealth, the gap between the rich and poor in America remains stark. The top one percent The United States was the country with the most billionaires in the world in 2025. Elon Musk, with a net worth of 342 billion U.S. dollars, was among the richest people in the United States in 2025. Over the past 50 years, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio has exploded, causing the gap between rich and poor to grow, with some economists theorizing that this gap is the largest it has been since right before the Great Depression.
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This table describes the distribution of income, consumption, and wealth components of the sector households in the national accounts over different household groups. Households are identified by main source of income, living situation, household composition, age classes of the head of the household, income class by 20% groups, and net worth class by 20% groups. Data available from: 2015. Status of the figures: All data are provisional. Changes as of October 19th 2023: The figures of 2015-2020 are revised. Results for 2021 are added to the table. When will new figures be published? New figures will be released in October 2024.
The massive wealth inequality in the world is underpinned by this chart: while *** percent of the world's population had fortunes of more than one million U.S. dollars in 2025, over ** percent of the global population had a total wealth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars.
Wealth indicators and distributions, by household characteristics such as income quintile, age, housing tenure and composition, Canada, regions and provinces, annual 2010 to 2019 and quarterly starting 2020.
Coordinated by Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the World Wealth and Income Database aims to provide open access to data series on income and wealth worldwide. The goal is to be able to produce Distributional National Accounts: estimates of the distribution of wealth and income using concepts that are consistent with the macroeconomic national accounts. The focus lies not only on the national level, but also on the global and regional level.
In the third quarter of 2024, the top ten percent of earners in the United States held over ** percent of total wealth. This is fairly consistent with the second quarter of 2024. Comparatively, the wealth of the bottom ** percent of earners has been slowly increasing since the start of the *****, though remains low. Wealth distribution in the United States by generation can be found here.
In the first quarter of 2024, 51.8 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by members of the baby boomer generation. In comparison, millennials own around 9.4 percent of total wealth in the U.S. In terms of population distribution, there is almost an equal share of millennials and baby boomers in the United States.
In 2023, roughly 1.49 billion adults worldwide had a net worth of less than 10,000 U.S. dollars. By comparison, 58 million adults had a net worth of more than one million U.S. dollars in the same year. Wealth distribution The distribution of wealth is an indicator of economic inequality. The United Nations says that wealth includes the sum of natural, human, and physical assets. Wealth is not synonymous with income, however, because having a large income can be depleted if one has significant expenses. In 2023, nearly 1,700 billionaires had a total wealth between one to two billion U.S. dollars. Wealth worldwide China had the highest number of billionaires in 2023, with the United States following behind. That same year, New York had the most billionaires worldwide.
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This table shows the distribution of wealth of households. The figures in this table are broken down to components of wealth and different household characteristics. Data available from: 2006. The population consists of all private households with income on January 1st of the reporting year. Status of the figures: The figures for 2006 to 2022 are final. The figures for 2023 are preliminary. The compilation of the figures has been changed in a number of parts from reporting year 2011 compared to previous years: From 2011, more complete information on bank and saving credits and securities is available. All small amounts are also observed from that moment on. As a result, there are more households with these assets. From 2011, more complete information on debts is available. Education loans and loans from banks are fully observed from that moment on. As a result, there are more households with other loans. Changes as of 1 November 2024: Update with final figures for 2022 and provisional figures for 2023 When will new figures be published? New figures for 2024 will be published in the fall of 2025.
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Graph and download economic data for Share of Net Worth Held by the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBSTP1300) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about shares, net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.
This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (1 item: Canada); Statistics (3 items: Value; Distribution of value; Value per household); Characteristics (13 items: All households; Lowest income quintile; Second income quintile; Third income quintile; ...); Wealth (11 items: Total assets; Financial assets; Life insurance and pensions; Other financial assets; ...).
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This table contains the number of private households by asset class and income position. Households of students and households with an incomplete annual income are not taken into account. Data available from 2000 Changes as of 23 January 2018 None, this table has been discontinued When will new figures be available? Not applicable anymore
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The rapid increase of wealth inequality in the past few decades is one of the most disturbing social and economic issues of our time. Studying its origin and underlying mechanisms is essential for policy aiming to control and even reverse this trend. In that context, controlling the distribution of income, using income tax or other macroeconomic policy instruments, is generally perceived as effective for regulating the wealth distribution. We provide a theoretical tool, based on the realistic modeling of wealth inequality dynamics, to describe the effects of personal savings and income distribution on wealth inequality. Our theoretical approach incorporates coupled equations, solved using iterated maps to model the dynamics of wealth and income inequality. Notably, using the appropriate historical parameter values we were able to capture the historical dynamics of wealth inequality in the United States during the course of the 20th century. It is found that the effect of personal savings on wealth inequality is substantial, and its major decrease in the past 30 years can be associated with the current wealth inequality surge. In addition, the effect of increasing income tax, though naturally contributing to lowering income inequality, might contribute to a mild increase in wealth inequality and vice versa. Plausible changes in income tax are found to have an insignificant effect on wealth inequality, in practice. In addition, controlling the income inequality, by progressive taxation, for example, is found to have a very small effect on wealth inequality in the short run. The results imply, therefore, that controlling income inequality is an impractical tool for regulating wealth inequality.
The income quintiles refer to the quintiles estimated at the Canada level and not at the provincial/territorial level. The Income quintiles are assigned based on the equalized household disposable income. This takes into account differences in household size and composition. The Oxford-modified equivalence scale is used; it assigns a value of 1 to the first adult, 0.5 to each additional person aged 14 and over, and 0.3 for all children under 14. Age groups refer to the age group of the major income earner. Life insurance and pensions include the value of all life insurance and employer pension plans, termination basis. Excludes public plans administered or sponsored by governments: Old Age Security (OAS) including the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Spouse's Allowance (SPA), as well as the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans (CPP/QPP). Other financial assets include total currency and deposits, Canadian short-term paper, Canadian bonds and debentures, foreign investments in paper and bonds, mortgages, equity and investment funds, and other receivables. Other non-financial assets include consumer durables, machinery and equipment, and intellectual property products. Excludes accumulation of value of collectibles including coins, stamps and art work. Other liabilities include major credit cards and retail store cards, gasoline station cards, etc., vehicle loans, lines of credit, student loans, other loans from financial institutions and other money owed. The sum of the values for net worth and its components by province and region is less than the total for Canada as they exclude the territories. The coefficients of variation from Statistics Canada's Survey of Financial Security for 2012 and 2016, which serve as indicators of the accuracy of these estimates for net worth and its components, are available in the appendix to Distributions of Household Economic Accounts, estimates of asset, liability and net worth distributions, 2010 to 2019, technical methodology and quality report for the March 2020 release. Distribution of value" is the share of a wealth component (such as total assets) attributable to the various household characteristics (such as lowest income quintile)." This table has been archived and replaced by table 36100661.
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This is the replication material for "Rapid Dynamics of Top Wealth Shares and Self-Made Fortunes, and Overall Wealth Mobility: What is the Role of Family Firms?". Abstract: We derive an analytical link between the fast dynamics of inequality at thetop of the wealth distribution and the prevalence of newly created fortunes.Specifically, in the context of a random growth model of wealth accumulation,the shape of the top of the wealth distribution changes rapidly only if the pacewith which new fortunes are created is fast. Quantitatively, the decision of afew families to bear a large amount of idiosyncratic risk in the form of familyfirms is crucial in accounting for both the prevalence of new fortunes and thedynamics of top wealth inequality.
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Graph and download economic data for Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLB50107) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.
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The European Rich List Database (ERLDB) collects anonymized data on the wealth of the richest individuals in 23 countries. The dataset comprises estimated wealth holdings of more than 13,300 observations as published by journalistic magazines between 2002 and 2021.
The Distributional Financial Accounts (DFAs) provide a quarterly measure of the distribution of U.S. household wealth since 1989, based on a comprehensive integration of disaggregated household-level wealth data with official aggregate wealth measures. The data set contains the level and share of each balance sheet item on the Financial Accounts' household wealth table (Table B.101.h), for various sub-populations in the United States. In our core data set, aggregate household wealth is allocated to each of four percentile groups of wealth: the top 1 percent, the next 9 percent (i.e., 90th to 99th percentile), the next 40 percent (50th to 90th percentile), and the bottom half (below the 50th percentile). Additionally, the data set contains the level and share of aggregate household wealth by income, age, generation, education, and race. The quarterly frequency makes the data useful for studying the business cycle dynamics of wealth concentration--which are typically difficult to observe in lower-frequency data because peaks and troughs often fall between times of measurement. These data will be updated about 10 or 11 weeks after the end of each quarter, making them a timely measure of the distribution of wealth.