Top 10% of U.S. families saw net worth rise $800,000 since 2022

By Grace Kim

The typical family in the wealthiest 10% of Americans saw its median net worth rise nearly $800,000 from 2022 to 2025, while the inflation-adjusted median for all households rose 2%, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, put the inflation-adjusted figure for the typical top-decile family at close to $4.9 million in 2025. He said the median net worth of the top 10% rose 19% in real terms over the three years, widening the gap with the middle and bottom of the distribution.

Zandi said families in the 50th to 75th percentile “eked out only small gains.” Their median net worth reached nearly $406,000, up about $15,000. The typical family in the bottom quarter fell to $1,700 in 2025, less than half its median three years earlier.

What separated the top from the bottom?

The Fed’s net-worth measure equals a household’s assets minus its debts. Since 2022, a gap in stock ownership drove much of the divide, Zandi said: “Stock prices rose strongly between the surveys, and the gains went to those who own them.” The wealthiest 10% hold nearly 90% of stocks, according to the Fed data.

MarketWatch reported that the S&P 500 rose more than 60% in the three years between the surveys and has continued to rise since, adding to the value of stock holdings concentrated among the top 10%.

Financial planner Hanna Horvath tied the divide to ownership rather than salary alone: “The wealthiest Americans increasingly receive money from things they already own. … Much of America’s vast wealth inequality can be attributed to the growing divide between earned income and ownership, which is only increasing.”

MarketWatch noted that a high-paying job can make it easier to accumulate wealth only if a household does not spend all the income. The Fed measure captures the resulting stock of assets after debts; it does not represent annual earnings.

Zandi’s account points to one mechanism: ownership of appreciating assets separated the top from the rest after 2022.

Has the gain spread beyond the top?

Josh Bivens, chief economist at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, said “wealth is up for just about everybody” when comparing 2025 with 2019, the last prepandemic Fed survey. The real median net worth of the lower half of households was higher in 2025 than in 2019.

Bivens said consumer finances in 2022 still reflected pandemic-related stimulus checks. Those payments gave lower-wealth households a temporary net-worth boost that lost momentum by 2025, even as the six-year comparison remained positive.

MarketWatch reported that consumer sentiment had been “in the gutter” for some time. It also noted that many young Americans felt their financial goals were out of reach despite the improvement in the broader data.

Bivens’s six-year comparison shows broad progress, but the top’s gains from 2022 to 2025 ran far ahead.

How did higher home values affect households?

Josh Bivens said rising home values, which climbed about 30% between the surveys, accounted for much of the net-worth gain among middle-class households. He called the change “very double-edged.”

Bivens said higher prices helped existing owners build equity but made it harder for first-time buyers to enter the market. The same costs also made it harder for owners to move to a home that better fit their needs.

Bivens’s housing assessment shows the split: owners gained equity, while buyers and movers faced a higher barrier.

How much did borrowing costs rise?

The Fed report showed that financing became more expensive between the two surveys:

• The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose from 4.2% to 6.7%.
• The average rate on a new-vehicle loan rose from 4.9% to 7.7%.
• The average credit-card rate rose from 14.6% to 21.4%.

Madeline Brown, a senior policy associate in the Research to Action Lab at the left-leaning Urban Institute, said rising interest rates, on top of high prices, had made “the entrance into asset holding” higher for households that needed to borrow.

Brown said, for people who already owned assets before prices and interest rates rose, “it’s just quite a different economy,” with the wealthiest 10% especially advantaged. Zandi said lower-wealth families “took the brunt of the high inflation and interest rates.”

Zandi said a strong postpandemic job market lifted lower-wealth workers’ pay and narrowed income inequality a bit, but little of that income became wealth. Overall inflation also left renters and homeowners with more difficulty saving and getting ahead, MarketWatch reported.

The Fed’s rate data make one point clear: buying assets became harder, while households that already owned them kept the advantage.

Can saving and family help close the gap?

The personal saving rate—the share of income left after taxes and spending—fell from 7% in September 2019 to 3.6% in September 2022 and stood at 3.8% this September, according to the Fed data.

Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, said family help has become an important advantage. Inheritances and down-payment assistance can compound assets already owned by wealthier households.

Collins described the result as “compounding advantages at the top, and compounding barriers at the bottom.” He added, “It’s not just about wealth — it’s about power.”

Collins framed artificial intelligence as a force that could power stock-market gains while threatening major labor-market disruption. He said those “at the very top are figuring out how to extract more wealth from the rest of the economy,” which is “good for investors, bad for workers.”

Collins’s transfer analysis points to a reinforcing cycle: low saving and concentrated assets leave the top with more room to compound.

The next test is whether lower-wealth households can lift saving and ownership fast enough to keep pace with the top 10% as prices and borrowing costs rise.