Who owns America's wealth, 1950–2026
Household net worth broken down into 100 one-percent groups, every year since 1950. Drag to rotate, hover for values, zoom with the chart toolbar.
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Age of household head
From the Survey of Consumer Finances, every 3 years 1989–2022: interpolated between surveys and held at the 2022 mix after. Dollar views show this age group's contribution to each group's average, not its own average.
More wealth Less wealth Net debt Estimated: WID shows exactly 0.00% Slice
Cross-section and breakdowns ↓Cross-section
Slice the 3-D chart at one year or one percentile, or click any pillar. Then break the slice down by gender, race, holdings, work or age, and click a bar for details.
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2026
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Survey estimates: a single percentile has only a few dozen surveyed households (use the averaging options below), and each couple counts as one woman and one man.
| Group | Value | Share of all wealth | Other sources |
|---|
Sources
WID.world: net personal wealth shares
Share of wealth held by each 1-percentile group (shwealj992, p0p1 … p99p100), 1950–2024.
- WID.world: United States
- WID bulk data download · income:
sptincj992(pre-tax national income) andsdiincj992(post-tax national income), 1950–2024; the Trends tab's four groups back to 1913 - Saez & Zucman (2020), Distributional Macroeconomic Accounts
- WID technical note: series 1800–2024
Federal Reserve: Distributional Financial Accounts
Quarterly net-worth shares for the top 0.1%, next 0.9%, next 9%, next 40% and bottom 50%. Used to carry the WID bins forward to 2025–2026 and as a cross-check. The Trends tab also shows what each group holds (homes, stocks, pensions, businesses, debt) and wealth by race, age, education, generation and income group.
Federal Reserve: Survey of Consumer Finances
Household-level survey, every three years 1989–2022. Used for the Gender, Race, Location of money, Work sector and Age breakdowns and the age slider: who is in each 1% percentile and what they hold.
Smith, Zidar & Zwick: top wealth shares
Top 10%, 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% shares of wealth, 1966–2016, from the same tax records and for the same unit as WID, but assuming the rich earn higher returns. Shown dotted on the Trends tab (Source: WID + SZZ).
Census Bureau: Survey of Income and Program Participation
Median and mean household net worth, yearly 2014–2024, from the detailed wealth tables (Tables 1 and 5). Census's mean covers households below the 99th percentile only. Shown on the Trends tab against the SCF and the national accounts, with a state map from the 2024 state tables (state tables).
SCF+ (Kuhn, Schularick & Steins)
The Fed's historical consumer surveys from 1949 joined to the modern Survey of Consumer Finances and adjusted to the national accounts: household wealth by group, 1949–2016. Shown dotted on the Trends tab (Source: WID + SCF+).
- Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949–2016 (Journal of Political Economy, 2020) · data: the article's Data Archive
Census Bureau: household income by fifth
Shares and averages of household money income for each fifth and the top 5%, 1967–2025, from the Current Population Survey (Historical Income Tables H-2 and H-3). Shown on the Trends tab with an income measure.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Expenditure Survey
Average spending and income before and after taxes for each fifth of income, 1984–2023, through the BLS public data API (series CXUTOTALEXPLB0102M and similar). Shown on the Trends tab with an income measure.
Congressional Budget Office: household income
Household income by group before and after means-tested transfers and federal taxes, 1979–2023, from The Distribution of Household Income, 2023. Households are ranked by size-adjusted income before transfers and taxes; each fifth holds about the same number of people. Shown on the Trends tab with the Income measure.
Totals, adults and households
WID's own averages per adult (ahwealj992, aptincj992), its adult count (npopuli992) and price index (inyixxi999) give the dollar views. The Fed's household net worth carries them past 2024, and the Census household count turns the Fed's figures into per-household dollars.
- Household net worth (Fed Z.1 table B.101.h, BOGZ1FL192090005Q), 1987 on · before 1987: households & nonprofits (TNWBSHNO), scaled to households
- Total households (Census, TTLHH)
Prices and consumer spending
Used by the CPI-U, PCE and consumer-spending views.
How the numbers are built
- Share of wealth
- WID's share of total net personal wealth held by each 1-percentile group. Bins with more debt than assets are negative (shown in red).
- Dollars per adult
- WID's own average net worth (or pre-tax income) per adult in each 1% group, published in constant 2025 dollars and turned into each year's dollars with WID's national income price index. Because WID ranks adults, with a couple's wealth split equally, these are per adult, not per household. For 2025–2026, past WID's last year, they are our estimates: WID's 2024 average per adult, grown with the Fed's household net worth and WID's adult count, times the extended shares.
- Real dollars, CPI-U / PCE
- Years of consumer spending
- Average net worth per adult in the group ÷ consumer spending per adult (PCE ÷ WID's adult count). A value of 10 means the group's wealth would pay for 10 years of an average adult's share of spending.
- Adults vs households
- WID ranks adults aged 20+, with each couple's wealth split equally between them, not households, so the 3-D map's percentiles and dollars are per adult. Adults and households rank differently, so WID's figures can't be read as household averages. The Fed and the Survey of Consumer Finances rank households: use the Trends tab's Fed or Compare source for per-household dollars. The Fed puts the top 1% about 5 points lower than WID does.
- Grey pillars: estimated shares
- WID publishes each group's share rounded to 0.01% of all wealth. Groups holding almost nothing, or owing almost as much as they own, come out as exactly 0.00%, which hides both their size and whether they are in debt. Each run of these zeros is estimated by drawing a straight line between the nearest published groups on either side; wealth always rises with rank, so the line stays in order. A run at the very bottom (in the 1950s) is extended from the trend of the next 20 groups. Every estimate stays within ±0.0045%, so it still rounds to WID's 0.00%. This affects the Share view only: WID publishes each group's average dollars precisely, so dollar views need no estimate.
- Income
- The Income measure is WID's pre-tax national income for each 1% group, 1950–2024: wages plus business and investment income, before taxes and transfers, with pensions counted when they are paid out. It is broader than salary alone. Dollar views are WID's own average pre-tax income per adult in each group. Groups WID rounds to exactly 0.00% are estimated in grey, as for wealth. There is no 1% income data after 2024 yet.
- Age of household head
- Gender, race, location of money, work sector and age
- Stair-steps near zero
- Because of that 0.01% rounding, the groups just above and below zero jump between a few rounded values, which shows up as steps in the Log view.
- Filling gaps
Where sources disagree
| Topic | What the sources say |
|---|
Share of wealth held by each group
Source
Cross-section by group
The same breakdowns as the 3-D map's cross-section, for the four groups instead of single percentiles.
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Survey estimates from the Survey of Consumer Finances (every 3 years, 1989–2022; years between are interpolated). Each couple counts as one woman and one man.
A household's net worth: two surveys and the national accounts
The Fed's breakdowns
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Household net worth by state
Show
All states as a table
Household income by fifth · Census
What each income fifth earns and spends · BLS
Before and after taxes and transfers
Shares from WID.world (pre-tax national income, or net personal wealth, for each 1% group), added up into four groups; the top 0.1% and 0.01% are WID's own figures for those groups. The comparisons are the Fed's Distributional Financial Accounts and Smith, Zidar and Zwick's top wealth shares; the breakdowns come from the Survey of Consumer Finances; the household chart adds the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation, and the Income measure's before-and-after chart is the Congressional Budget Office's. Sources, method notes and where the sources disagree are on the 3-D map tab.
Verification
Every number on the Explore tab is re-derived from the raw source files by scripts/verify.py. Jev (TypeSafe) then checks what each series means against its source's own documentation.
| Check | Result | Detail |
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Meaning checks by Jev (TypeSafe)
| Claim on this page | Source doc | Jev verdict | Confidence | Result |
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