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America's bottom half holds $9,000
Averages hide the bottom
The world averages $75,000 of wealth per person. The US sits far above that at $470,000, yet its bottom half holds just $9,000 each, which is technically worse than the bottom 50% in China. The top 1% of US households enjoy $16.4 million each.
The top 1 percent
The top 1% in the United States hold 35% of total wealth, the equivalent of 5% of global wealth. Across the world, the top 1% of households accounted for more than 20% of all wealth in 2024, and the top 1% in the most advanced economies own somewhere around 25% of their nations' wealth.
Why the gap widens
Rising asset prices deepen the gap. When asset values outpace economic growth, the people who own the assets become wealthier, which further entrenches the existing inequality. Households overall hold about 95% of the world's wealth, a pillar of personal economic stability, but the distribution stays heavily skewed.
How do researchers measure wealth at the top?
Household surveys tend to miss the very richest, so economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman use income tax records and estimate asset holdings from the capital income people report. The Federal Reserve takes a different route in its Distributional Financial Accounts, which combine survey data with the national balance sheet to produce quarterly estimates for each wealth group. Both approaches find wealth far more concentrated than income.
Why do rising stock prices widen the gap?
Stocks are held very unevenly. In the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts, the top 10 percent of US households hold roughly 90 percent of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, while the bottom half holds only about 1 percent. A broad rally therefore adds far more to the top of the distribution than to the bottom. For the middle of the distribution, the largest asset is typically a home.
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