Held by the top 1%
About 1.3 million households hold $55.0 trillion.
Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026
A public information campaign
Count The Zeros
American households hold $174.0 trillion in net worth. The bottom half of the country holds 2.45% of it.
Every figure on this site comes from a government agency, a peer-reviewed study, or a published dataset, and every one of them is cited.
31.63%
Share of all US household wealth held by the top 1 percent.
Federal Reserve, Q1 2026.
Federal Reserve, Q1 2026.
01 / The headline figures
31.63%
2.45%
14.41%
67.96%
12.9×
$174.0T
Who owns America
All figures below are shares of total United States household net worth, measured by the Federal Reserve for the first quarter of 2026.
Held by the bottom 50%
About 66 million households hold $4.27 trillion between them.
Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026Held by the top 0.1%
Roughly 132,000 households hold $25.1 trillion, nearly six times what the bottom half holds.
Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026Held by the top 10%
$118.3 trillion of the $174.0 trillion total.
Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026Top 1% vs. the bottom half
The top 1% hold 12.9 times as much wealth as the entire bottom 50% put together.
$55.03T ÷ $4.27T · Federal Reserve DFATotal US household net worth
Up from $20.4 trillion in 1989, though the bottom half's share of it fell over the same period.
Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026
02 / The split
$174 trillion,
$174 trillion,
divided
Every US household lined up poorest to richest, left to right. The height of the line is what one household at that point in the line actually owns. The axis is linear, so nothing is being flattened to make it fit.
03 / Count the zeros
These numbers are
These numbers are
too big to feel
A million and a billion sound like neighbors. One is a thousand times the other. The arithmetic is shown for every comparison below so you can check it yourself.
01
A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
1,000,000 sec ÷ 86,400 sec/day = 11.6 days
1,000,000,000 sec ÷ 86,400 ÷ 365.25 = 31.7 years
Ratio = 1,000×
1,000,000,000 sec ÷ 86,400 ÷ 365.25 = 31.7 years
Ratio = 1,000×
Arithmetic. Verify with any calculator.
02
The richest American earns a new car payment about every second, without working.
Net worth (conservative floor): $700,000,000,000
At a 4% annual return → $28,000,000,000 / year
÷ 365 days = $76,712,329 / day
÷ 86,400 sec = $888 per second
Average new car payment (Experian, Q1 2026) = $770 / month
→ one month's car payment earned in 0.87 seconds
At a 4% annual return → $28,000,000,000 / year
÷ 365 days = $76,712,329 / day
÷ 86,400 sec = $888 per second
Average new car payment (Experian, Q1 2026) = $770 / month
→ one month's car payment earned in 0.87 seconds
Forbes real-time billionaires list · Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market Q1 2026. Return rate is a stated assumption, not a measured figure.
03
He could buy a brand-new car every single day for 38,000 years before running out.
$700,000,000,000 ÷ $50,000 per car = 14,000,000 cars
÷ 365 cars/year = 38,356 years
From investment returns alone ($76.7M/day), he could buy 1,534 cars per day, forever.
÷ 365 cars/year = 38,356 years
From investment returns alone ($76.7M/day), he could buy 1,534 cars per day, forever.
$50,000 approximates the average new-vehicle transaction price. Average new auto loan was $43,925 in Q1 2026 (Experian).
04
The top 1% could buy a house outright for every household in the bottom half, and keep almost half their money.
Households in the bottom 50% = 66,000,000
Median US home price (NAR, June 2026) = $440,600
66,000,000 × $440,600 = $29,080,000,000,000 ($29.08T)
Top 1% net worth = $55.03T
→ left over afterwards: $25.95T, or 47% of what they started with
Median US home price (NAR, June 2026) = $440,600
66,000,000 × $440,600 = $29,080,000,000,000 ($29.08T)
Top 1% net worth = $55.03T
→ left over afterwards: $25.95T, or 47% of what they started with
Federal Reserve DFA Q1 2026 · National Association of Realtors median existing-home price. A one-time transfer, ignoring what buying 66 million homes at once would do to prices. The top 0.1% alone could not do this: their $25.07T covers 86% of the bill.
05
37% of American adults can't cover a $400 emergency. Covering it for every one of them would cost the top 1% seven hundredths of one percent of their wealth.
US adults ≈ 267,000,000 · share who cannot cover $400 in cash = 37%
= 98,800,000 people × $400 = $39,520,000,000 ($39.5B)
$39.5B ÷ $55.03T = 0.0718% of top-1% wealth
→ they could do it 1,393 times over
= 98,800,000 people × $400 = $39,520,000,000 ($39.5B)
$39.5B ÷ $55.03T = 0.0718% of top-1% wealth
→ they could do it 1,393 times over
Federal Reserve SHED 2024 (63% could cover it, so 37% could not) · Census adult population estimate · Federal Reserve DFA Q1 2026.
06
Every student loan in America adds up to less than a fifteenth of what the top 0.1% hold.
Total US student loan debt (Federal Reserve G.19, March 2026) = $1.866T
Top 0.1% net worth, about 132,000 households = $25.07T → 13.4×
Top 1% net worth = $55.03T → 29.5×
The entire bottom half of the country owns $4.27T, only 2.3× the student debt
Top 0.1% net worth, about 132,000 households = $25.07T → 13.4×
Top 1% net worth = $55.03T → 29.5×
The entire bottom half of the country owns $4.27T, only 2.3× the student debt
Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit release · Federal Reserve DFA Q1 2026.
07
Half of every share of stock in America is owned by one percent of households.
US household corporate equities and mutual fund shares = $55.15T
Top 1% hold 50.13% · Top 10% hold 87.33%
Bottom 50% hold 1.06%, about $0.59T
S&P 500 buybacks in 2024 = $942.5B, paid out along those lines
Top 1% hold 50.13% · Top 10% hold 87.33%
Bottom 50% hold 1.06%, about $0.59T
S&P 500 buybacks in 2024 = $942.5B, paid out along those lines
Calculated from the Federal Reserve DFA Q1 2026 asset tables · S&P Dow Jones Indices. Working through the arithmetic is on the Power page.
08
The average top-1% household holds 645 times the wealth of the average household in the bottom half.
Top 1%: $55.03T ÷ ~1.32M households = $41,690,000 each
Bottom 50%: $4.27T ÷ ~66M households = $64,600 each
Ratio = 645×
Bottom 50%: $4.27T ÷ ~66M households = $64,600 each
Ratio = 645×
Federal Reserve DFA Q1 2026. Group averages, not medians.
09
A median American household would need 8.4 million years of income to match the richest American.
US median household income (Census, 2024) = $83,730 / year
$700,000,000,000 ÷ $83,730 = 8,360,000 years
Spending nothing. Paying no taxes. Saving every cent.
To reach just the top 1% entry point (~$11.6M): 139 years
$700,000,000,000 ÷ $83,730 = 8,360,000 years
Spending nothing. Paying no taxes. Saving every cent.
To reach just the top 1% entry point (~$11.6M): 139 years
US Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2024 (P60-286).
04 / Does the work pay?
Does working harder
Reading the chart
Why two sets of numbers
$15,080
1,094% vs 26%
0.4
The honest answer
What the gap does not tell you
Does working harder
mean earning more?
There is a clean way to test this at the level of the whole economy. Productivity is the official measure of how much output an hour of work produces. If more and better work meant more pay, productivity and pay would move together.
The test
One line kept climbing. The other flattened out and stayed there.
1979 to 2025 net productivity +90.2%
1979 to 2025 pay for the typical worker +33.0%
EPI estimate: had pay tracked productivity, the typical worker
would earn about $16.40 more per hour today
1979 to 2025 pay for the typical worker +33.0%
EPI estimate: had pay tracked productivity, the typical worker
would earn about $16.40 more per hour today
Economic Policy Institute, Productivity–Pay Gap series. Productivity is net productivity of the total economy; pay is compensation of production and non-supervisory workers.
Real hourly pay spent 30 years below where it started
On the Bureau of Labor Statistics series above, average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, were lower in 1990 and in 2000 than they were in 1964. They did not durably clear the 1964 level again until the mid-2010s.
Over the same period output per hour rose 225%. By 2025 the two series were about 206 percentage points apart.
The measure changes the size, not the direction
The +90.2% and +33.0% figures come from EPI and use net productivity and total compensation, which counts employer-paid benefits such as health insurance. The chart above uses gross output per hour and wages only, so its gap is wider.
Both are published, both are defensible, and both show the same divergence. We give you both rather than picking the more dramatic one and hiding the choice.
Full-time, federal minimum wage, one year
$7.25 × 40 hours × 52 weeks, before tax. The 2026 federal poverty guideline for a household of two is $21,640, so full-time work at the federal floor does not reach it.
US Dept of Labor; HHS poverty guidelines, 2026CEO pay against typical pay since 1978
Realized compensation at the 350 largest US firms against pay for the typical worker, over the same 46 years.
Economic Policy InstituteIntergenerational earnings elasticity
Standard US estimates put it near 0.4, meaning roughly 40% of a parent's earnings advantage carries into the next generation. An elasticity of 0 would mean parental income tells you nothing about a child's.
Solon (1992), Zimmerman (1992) and later replicationsAt the individual level, yes. At the level of the economy, not since about 1979.
Effort, skill and education still clearly affect what one person earns. The Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently reports higher median earnings at higher levels of education, and nothing above contradicts that.
What the data shows is a different claim: that across the whole economy, output per hour worked and the pay of the typical worker stopped rising together around 1979. More work produced more output. The additional output did not arrive in typical paychecks at the same rate.
Where the difference went is a separate question
The productivity–pay gap measures a divergence. It does not by itself identify a cause, and economists attribute it to different mixes of factors including globalization, technology, declining union density, employer concentration and changes in corporate governance.
This site reports the divergence, which is measured, and does not assign it a cause, which is contested.
05 / The direction
It is not
22.8% → 31.6%
3.51% → 2.45%
It is not
getting better
Top 1% share, 1989 → 2026
The top 1% share of US household wealth rose by 8.8 percentage points across 37 years of Federal Reserve records.
Federal Reserve DFA, 1989 Q3 – 2026 Q1Bottom 50% share, 1989 → 2026
Over the same period, the bottom half's share fell by roughly a third. At the end of 2010 it hit a record low of 0.40%.
Federal Reserve DFA, 1989 Q3 – 2026 Q1
06 / What comes next
The forward-looking
281×
90.2% / 33.0%
90% → 50%
15 yrs
$124T
74.9%
37%
3.4%
17 yrs
The forward-looking
facts
These are measured trends and published projections about the United States. Each one is sourced.
CEO-to-worker pay ratio
In 1978 it was 31-to-1. CEO pay at the 350 largest US firms has risen 1,094% since 1978; typical worker pay rose 26%.
Economic Policy Institute, 2024 dataProductivity vs. pay, 1979–2025
Net productivity grew 90.2%. Pay for the typical worker grew 33.0%. The gap is the divergence.
Economic Policy InstituteChildren who out-earn their parents
Of Americans born in 1940, about 90% earned more than their parents. Of those born in the 1980s, about 50% did.
Chetty et al., Science, 2017Life expectancy gap
At age 40, American men in the top 1% of income live about 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1%. For women the gap is 10 years.
Chetty et al., JAMA, 2016Projected inherited wealth by 2048
Of an earlier $84.4T estimate, $35.8 trillion (42%) was projected to come from the high- and ultra-high-net-worth households that make up 1.5% of all US households.
Cerulli Associates projectionsPriced out of a median new home
About 100.6 million of 141.1 million US households could not afford a median-priced new home in 2025.
National Association of Home Builders, 2025Can't cover $400 in cash
63% of US adults said they could cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent. The remaining 37% could not.
Federal Reserve SHED, 2024 survey"True tax rate" of the 25 richest
From 2014–2018 their combined wealth grew $401 billion. They paid $13.6 billion in federal income tax over the same period.
ProPublica, from IRS records, 2021Federal minimum wage unchanged
$7.25/hour since 24 July 2009, the longest freeze since the federal minimum wage was created in 1938. Twenty states still use it as their floor.
US Department of LaborNow you have
the numbers
What you make of them is up to you. This site shows you where they came from and what the record says people can do about it.