The median wealth of White families exceeded that of families in other racial and ethnic groups by considerable amounts throughout the period. Over the 30-year period, the median wealth of families in higher-income groups, families with more education, and older families rose faster than that of families with less income, families with less education, and younger families.
In 2019, families in the top 10 percent of the distribution held 72 percent of total wealth, and families in the top 1 percent of the distribution held more than one-third families in the bottom half of the distribution held only 2 percent of total wealth. Families in the top 10 percent and in the top 1 percent of the distribution, in particular, saw their share of total wealth rise over the period. The growth of real wealth over the past three decades was not uniform: Family wealth increased more in the top half of the distribution than in the bottom half. The total real wealth (that is, wealth adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) held by families in the United States tripled from 1989 to 2019-from $38 trillion in 2019 dollars (roughly four times the nation’s gross domestic product, or GDP) to $115 trillion (about five times GDP). In addition, the report examines how total family wealth has changed since 2019. Building on earlier work by the Congressional Budget Office, this report examines changes in the distribution of family wealth (a family’s assets minus its debts) from 1989 to 2019 and analyzes those changes in relation to several family characteristics-income, level of education, race and ethnicity, age, and birth cohort.