Wealth & distribution

US household wealth: who holds it

US households held $174.0 trillion of net worth in 2026 Q1. The top 1% of the wealth distribution held 31.6% of it; the bottom half held 2.5%. Shares and levels here come from the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts, which distribute the Z.1 household aggregate using Survey of Consumer Finances weights; the median family net worth of $192,900 comes from the SCF itself. The DFA and the SCF answer different questions, and this page keeps them apart.

$174.0T
Household net worth: Z.1 aggregate, 2026 Q1; 31.6%
Held by the top 1%: net worth share, 2026 Q1; 2.5%
Held by the bottom 50%: net worth share, 2026 Q1; $192,900
Median family net worth: SCF 2022, 2022 dollars

Data as of 2026 Q1 (DFA), 2022 wave (SCF)

Two sources, two units. The DFA is a distribution of an aggregate: its net-worth LEVEL summed over the five wealth groups reproduces the Z.1 "Households; Net Worth" total by construction. It reports SHARES of that total and it has no median, because a distribution of an aggregate cannot have one. The SCF is a triennial survey of FAMILIES and is where medians come from. Aggregate shares and family medians answer different questions; mixing them is the most common wealth-statistics error, and this page labels the unit on every exhibit. All figures are displayed with attribution to the Federal Reserve; this page republishes no bulk data.

Wealth & distribution

The record since 1989 shows a bottom-half recovery from its post-crash wealth trough

Net-worth share of the top 1%, the next 9%, the next 40% and the bottom 50%, every quarter since 1989 Q3. The bottom half's share fell to a trough of 0.4% in 2010 Q4, in the wake of the housing crash, while the top 1% held 28.8%; the bottom-half share has since recovered to 2.5% and the top 1% to 31.6%. NBER recessions shaded.

Source: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts Shares of aggregate household net worth; the DFA's top 0.1% and next 0.9% are combined into the top 1%. Methodology

Wealth & distribution

Top wealth is equities-heavy while the middle is housing-heavy

Composition of each group's assets in 2026 Q1. The top 1% holds 49.3% of its assets in corporate equities and fund shares against 11.6% in real estate, so its wealth tracks the stock market. The next 40% holds 37.6% in real estate against 10.6% in equities, so its wealth tracks the housing market. This is composition, not assertion: the bars are each group's own asset mix.

Real estateCorporate equities & fundsPensions (DB + DC)Private businessConsumer durablesOther assets

Source: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts Each bar is a group's assets by class, as a share of that group's total assets (the six DFA summary asset components, which sum to total assets). Methodology

Wealth & distribution

Millennial wealth share is climbing

Net-worth share by birth cohort. The millennial and younger cohorts' share rose from 4.2% in 2020 Q1 to 11.0% in 2026 Q1. That is the millennial catch-up, shown as observed, not projected. NBER recessions shaded.

Source: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts Generations by birth year (Silent and earlier: before 1946; Baby Boom: 1946-64; Gen X: 1965-80; Millennial and younger: 1981+). Methodology

Wealth & distribution

Aggregate share and median wealth rank racial groups differently

The left panel is each group's SHARE of aggregate household net worth (DFA, 2026 Q1); the right panel is the MEDIAN net worth of a family in that group (SCF, 2022). They order the groups differently on purpose: a share can be large because a group is large, while a median describes a typical family. Read together, not merged. No causal claim is made in either direction; the SCF Bulletin discusses these gaps directly.

Source: Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts | Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances DFA shares are of aggregate household net worth (2026 Q1); SCF medians are family net worth in 2022 dollars (2022 wave). Shares and medians are different objects. Methodology

Where wealth comes from

New wealth has two measured legs here: firms are founded, and households hold assets that appreciate. The first is the pace of firm formation; the second is who owns the appreciating assets. Both are shown as observed, from public-domain federal data, with no claim about what causes either.

Where wealth comes from

Firm formation recovered after a decades-long slide

New firms as a share of all firms, every year since 1978. The startup rate fell from 13.7% in 1978 to a trough of 7.6% in 2010, then recovered to 9.1% in 2023, when 508,777 firms were born. The Census establishment entry rate, a separate published measure, was 10.6% that year. NBER recessions shaded.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics Startup rate = firms at age 0 (the year's births) over all firms; both counts come from the BDS national tables. Methodology

Where wealth comes from

Asset ownership rises steeply with net worth

Share of families holding each wealth-building asset in the SCF 2022 wave, by net-worth group. Across all families, 66.1% owned their home, 21.0% held stocks directly and 14.6% held business equity. The rates climb steeply with net worth: in the top decile 95.4% owned a home, 55.5% held stocks directly and 47.9% held business equity, against 8.2%, 8.2% and 4.4% in the bottom quarter. "Directly held stocks" is the SCF's own column and sits well below the wider stock participation that also counts fund and retirement holdings. Rates are shares of families; no causal claim is made.

HomeownershipDirectly held stocksBusiness equity

Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances Percentage of families holding the asset (SCF 2022 wave), by net-worth percentile group; the SCF's directly-held Stocks column, not direct-plus-indirect participation. Methodology

Ownership of these appreciating assets is the counterpart to the asset mix in what each group owns above, and their long-run returns, the engine of the gap between owners and non-owners, are on returns.

How the Fed builds the DFA (Z.1 aggregates distributed with SCF weights, interpolated between waves and extrapolated after the latest wave), why surveys, administrative-tax capitalization and heterogeneous-returns methods disagree about top wealth, and why there is no such thing as a DFA median: see the methodology. Asset-return histories behind the composition story are on returns.