Graph and download economic data for Household Count in the 99th to 99.9th Wealth Percentiles (WFRBL99T999308) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about wealth, percentile, households, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Minimum Wealth Cutoff for the 99th to 99.9th Wealth Percentiles (WFRBL99T999309) from Q3 1989 to Q3 2022 about wealth, percentile, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Household Count in the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLTP1310) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about wealth, percentile, households, and USA.

The Distributional Financial Accounts (DFAs) integrate two data products produced by the Federal Reserve Board: the Financial Accounts of the United States, which provide quarterly data on aggregate balance sheets of major sectors of the U.S. economy, and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which provides comprehensive triennial microdata on the assets and liabilities of a representative sample of U.S. households. Information on the data collection process can be found at the Board of Governors (https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/efa/efa-distributional-financial-accounts.htm)."

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.

Graph and download economic data for Net Worth Held by the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLTP1246) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

In the first quarter of 2024, 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 follows closely behind China as the country with the most billionaires in the world. Elon Musk alone held around 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. 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.

The statistic above information on the net worth of U.S. American households before and after the Great Recession from 2003 to 2013, by percentile. In 2013, the median net worth of households, the 50th percentile, stood at 56,335 U.S. dollars.

The Distributional Financial Accounts (DFAs) integrate two data products produced by the Federal Reserve Board: the Financial Accounts of the United States, which provide quarterly data on aggregate balance sheets of major sectors of the U.S. economy, and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which provides comprehensive triennial microdata on the assets and liabilities of a representative sample of U.S. households. Information on the data collection process can be found at the Board of Governors (https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/efa/efa-distributional-financial-accounts.htm)."

In 2023, just over 50 percent of Americans had an annual household income that was less than 75,000 U.S. dollars. The median household income was 80,610 U.S. dollars in 2023. Income and wealth in the United States After the economic recession in 2009, income inequality in the U.S. is more prominent across many metropolitan areas. The Northeast region is regarded as one of the wealthiest in the country. Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts were among the states with the highest median household income in 2020. In terms of income by race and ethnicity, the average income of Asian households was 94,903 U.S. dollars in 2020, while the median income for Black households was around half of that figure. What is the U.S. poverty threshold? The U.S. Census Bureau annually updates its list of poverty levels. Preliminary estimates show that the average poverty threshold for a family of four people was 26,500 U.S. dollars in 2021, which is around 100 U.S. dollars less than the previous year. There were an estimated 37.9 million people in poverty across the United States in 2021, which was around 11.6 percent of the population. Approximately 19.5 percent of those in poverty were Black, while 8.2 percent were white.

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.

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.

Graph and download economic data for Household Count in the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLB50300) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about 1 to 49, wealth, percentile, households, and USA.

In 2021, the average income of households among Israel's highest one percent of earners, reached 4.7 million Israeli shekels, about 1.2 million U.S. dollars. Moreover, incomes peaked in 2017, due to a one-time tax incentive introduced by the government to release "trapped" capital gains tax. Overall, the average income of wealthy families in the country increased by 62 percent between 2013 and 2021.

Graph and download economic data for Minimum Wealth Cutoff for the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLTP1311) from Q3 1989 to Q3 2022 about wealth, percentile, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Share of Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (99th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBST01134) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Share of Net Worth Held by the Bottom 50% (1st to 50th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBSB50215) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about net worth, wealth, percentile, Net, and USA.

In Europe, the variation in average amounts of financial wealth per adult varied considerably as of 2022, from approximately 449,000 U.S. dollars in Switzerland to roughly 1,200 U.S. dollars in Azerbaijan. In Europe, the overall average financial wealth per adult as of 2022 was 84,308 U.S. dollars. In terms of private wealth, Europe held the second highest value in the world, after North America.

What is financial wealth?

Financial wealth, also known as financial assets or liquid assets can include wealth that an individual has in the forms of cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and bank deposits. In addition to financial wealth, wealth can also be measured in other assets, called non-financial wealth. This includes physical assets, such as real estate, land, vehicles, jewelry, and art, just to name a few.

Where do most wealthy individuals live?

Individuals with a net worth over one million U.S. dollars are called high-net worth individuals (HNWI). The United States was the home country to the highest number of HNWIs in 2021. China followed, although their number of HNWIs did not even reach one third of the number in the United States. In Europe, Switzerland is the country with the highest average financial wealth per adult, but with its small population size, the number of HNWIs does not come near the numbers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy – the European countries with the highest number of HNWIs. Considering Switzerland’s small population size, however, it is the country in the world with the highest proportion of millionaires.

In 2022, about 40 percent of adults in Mexico held a net worth under 10,000 U.S. dollars. In contrast, merely 393,000 Mexicans (that is, 0.4 percent of the total) had a net worth of over one million U.S. dollars. Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America regarding wealth distribution, with 78.7 percent of the national wealth held by the richest ten percent of the population.

The minimum salaryThe minimum wage per day guaranteed by law in Mexico was decreed to increase by 22 percent between 2021 and 2022, reaching 172.87 Mexican pesos in 2022. In the Free Zone located near the northern border the minimum daily wage was raised to 260.34 Mexican pesos.This represented the fourth consecutive incrase since 2019, but could prove to be insufficient to maintain the wellbeing of Mexican workers after the soaring inflation rate registered in 2022 and the economic impact of the COVID-19 in Mexican households. The legal minimum salary has a long history in the North American country, it was first implemented with the approval of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States in 1917. Income inequality in Latin AmericaLatin America, as other developing regions in the world, generally records high rates of inequality, with a Gini coefficient ranging between 38 and 54 among the region’s countries. Moreover, many of the countries with the biggest inequality in income distribution worldwide are found in Latin America. According to the Human Development Report 2019, wealth redistribution by means of tax transfers improves Latin America's Gini coefficient to a lesser degree than it does in advanced economies. Wider access to education and health services, on the other hand, have been proven to have a greater direct effect in improving Gini coefficient measurements in the region.

Graph and download economic data for Home Mortgages Held by the Top 0.1% (99.9th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) (WFRBLTP1238) from Q3 1989 to Q1 2025 about wealth, percentile, mortgage, housing, and USA.