US High-Net-Worth Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech | Last updated: September 3, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
The Federal Reserve’s June 18, 2026 release of the Distributional Financial Accounts put 1,348,292 US households — the top 1% by wealth — at $55.033 trillion in net worth. The bottom 90%, some 121.6 million households, held $55.751 trillion. Two groups, ninety times apart in headcount, now sit within one percent of each other on the balance sheet.
Quick Answer
At March 31, 2026, the wealthiest 1% of US households held $55.033 trillion, or 31.63% of the $174.0 trillion in total US household net worth, across 1,348,292 households — figures Axis Intelligence Research derives from the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts. The top 10% held 67.96%. Axis Intelligence Research measures the top 1%-to-bottom 90% net worth ratio at 0.9871, up from 0.9446 a year earlier.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the top 1% of US households held $55.033 trillion in net worth at March 31, 2026 against $55.751 trillion for the bottom 90% — a Parity Crossover Ratio (PCR) of 0.9871, up from 0.9446 at March 31, 2025.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the top 1% of US households owned 50.13% of all corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by households at March 31, 2026, crossing the halfway mark from 49.81% a year earlier, while the bottom 50% owned 1.06%.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, mean household net worth was $184,226,327 in the top 0.1%, $5,207,791 in the 90th–99th percentile band, $952,163 in the 50th–90th band and $63,136 in the bottom half.
- Axis Intelligence Research’s Risk Capital Exposure Index (RCX) reads 148.57 for the top 0.1% of US households at March 31, 2026 against 66.19 for the bottom half, on a base where all US households at Q1 2025 equal 100.
- The Federal Reserve’s most recent published wealth cutoffs, from the third quarter of 2022, put the entry point to the top 10% of US households at $2,148,339 in net worth, the top 1% at $11,146,846 and the top 0.1% at $46,369,052.
How Many High-Net-Worth Households Are There in the US?
Start with the definitional problem, because every number downstream depends on it.
“High-net-worth individual” has no federal definition. The threshold most widely repeated — $1 million in investable assets — originates in private wealth-management segmentation, not in any statute or statistical programme. The Investment Advisers Act has a qualified client test that Form ADV borrows for its client-type reporting, and it sits far above a million dollars. No federal agency counts “HNWIs.”
What the federal system does produce is a wealth distribution by percentile. The Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts allocate the entire household balance sheet from the Financial Accounts of the United States across five wealth percentile groups, quarterly, back to 1989. That is the measure this page uses throughout, and it is the reason the figures here can be dated to a quarter rather than to a survey year.
US Household Wealth Ladder, Q1 2026
| Wealth percentile group | Households | Net worth ($T) | Share of net worth | Mean net worth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 0.1% (99.9th–100th) | 136,095 | 25.072 | 14.41% | $184,226,327 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| 99th–99.9th | 1,212,197 | 29.961 | 17.22% | $24,716,047 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| Top 1% (99th–100th) | 1,348,292 | 55.033 | 31.63% | $40,816,826 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| 90th–99th | 12,140,540 | 63.225 | 36.33% | $5,207,791 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| Top 10% (90th–100th) | 13,488,832 | 118.258 | 67.96% | $8,767,134 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| 50th–90th | 54,071,475 | 51.485 | 29.59% | $952,163 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| Bottom 50% (1st–50th) | 67,573,814 | 4.266 | 2.45% | $63,136 | Federal Reserve DFA |
| All US households | 135,134,121 | 174.010 | 100.00% | $1,287,681 | Federal Reserve DFA |
Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Distributional Financial Accounts, Levels of Wealth by Wealth Percentile Groups, Q1 2026 release (June 18, 2026). Percentile-group rows are Federal Reserve data; combined rows, means and shares are Axis Intelligence Research calculations from those rows.
Two entries in that table deserve a warning label before anyone quotes them.
Mean household net worth across all US households is $1,287,681. That figure is arithmetically correct and substantively misleading — it describes no household anywhere. The 50th–90th percentile band, four in ten American households, averages $952,163, and the median sits well below that. A mean pulled upward by 136,095 households averaging $184 million is a statement about the tail, not about the middle.
And the top 0.1% mean of $184,226,327 is a group average, not a typical fortune. Within it sit both a household at the $46.4 million entry line and the several hundred with balance sheets in the tens of billions.
Reconciling the $174 Trillion and $183 Trillion Figures
Both numbers circulate as “US household net worth,” and they measure different populations.
The Federal Reserve’s Z.1 series for households alone (BOGZ1FL192090005Q) reports $174,009,620 million at March 31, 2026. The more frequently quoted series (TNWBSHNO) reports $182,979,889 million — that one adds nonprofit organisations, which the national accounts group with households for balance-sheet purposes. Church endowments and university foundations are not household wealth.
The DFA distributes the household-only measure. Axis Intelligence Research’s sum of the five percentile groups comes to $174,009,619 million, which differs from the published Z.1 household total by $1 million on $174 trillion — a rounding artefact, and confirmation that the ladder above is complete rather than a sample.
Sarah Davis: The $183 trillion figure is the one that ends up in headlines, and it inflates the household story by nine trillion dollars of institutional money that no family can spend. When a wealth report divides that number by 135 million households to produce an average, it is compounding two errors — the wrong numerator and a mean where a distribution belongs. Use the household-only series and quote the ladder, not the average.
What Net Worth Puts a Household in the Top 1%?
The Federal Reserve publishes minimum wealth cutoffs alongside the DFA levels, but only for quarters anchored to a Survey of Consumer Finances field period. The most recent observation is the third quarter of 2022.
Minimum Net Worth to Enter Each Wealth Tier
| Wealth tier | Minimum net worth | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 10% (90th percentile) | $2,148,339 | Q3 2022 | Federal Reserve DFA, series WFRBLN09304 |
| Top 1% (99th percentile) | $11,146,846 | Q3 2022 | Federal Reserve DFA, series WFRBL99T999309 |
| Top 0.1% (99.9th percentile) | $46,369,052 | Q3 2022 | Federal Reserve DFA, series WFRBLTP1311 |
Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Distributional Financial Accounts, minimum wealth cutoff series, retrieved September 3, 2026. Cutoffs are published only in Survey of Consumer Finances reference quarters. [Older data]
These are the honest answer to the most-searched question in this subject, and they carry an honest caveat: they are three and a half years old, and aggregate household net worth has risen substantially since. Axis Intelligence Research will not extrapolate them. A cutoff is a point on a distribution, and moving one requires the underlying microdata, not a growth rate applied to a threshold — the composition of who sits at the 99th percentile changes as asset prices move, which is precisely why the Fed declines to interpolate them itself.
What can be said with the current data is that the $11.1 million top-1% line from 2022 sat remarkably close to the $11.4 million federal estate tax filing threshold the IRS used to define its own top-wealthholder population in 2019. Two entirely independent federal collections converged on roughly the same dollar figure for the top percentile of American wealth.
How Do High-Net-Worth Households Invest? Portfolio Allocation by Wealth Tier
This is where the wealth ladder stops being a story about quantity and becomes a story about composition.
Asset Allocation as a Share of Total Assets, Q1 2026
| Asset class | Top 0.1% | 99th–99.9th | 90th–99th | 50th–90th | Bottom 50% | All households |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate equities and mutual funds | 52.67% | 46.57% | 30.47% | 10.62% | 5.67% | 28.42% |
| Equity in noncorporate business | 18.49% | 13.29% | 7.80% | 3.94% | 1.61% | 8.54% |
| Real estate | 7.65% | 14.80% | 21.92% | 37.57% | 46.64% | 25.11% |
| Deposits | 5.82% | 6.33% | 7.51% | 8.60% | 7.66% | 7.45% |
| Debt securities | 4.36% | 3.74% | 3.54% | 1.98% | 0.28% | 3.02% |
| Money market funds | 3.98% | 3.21% | 3.05% | 1.83% | 0.52% | 2.68% |
| Defined benefit pensions | 1.18% | 2.98% | 10.52% | 15.90% | 4.72% | 9.47% |
| Defined contribution pensions | 0.61% | 4.52% | 8.47% | 8.58% | 6.63% | 6.76% |
| Consumer durables | 2.81% | 1.36% | 2.80% | 6.26% | 20.39% | 4.59% |
Source: Federal Reserve DFA, Q1 2026 release; shares calculated by Axis Intelligence Research as each asset class divided by the group’s total assets. Equity in noncorporate business is derived by Axis Intelligence Research as a residual, as described in the methodology. Rows shown are the nine largest categories; life insurance reserves, annuities, loans held as assets and miscellaneous assets complete each column in the accompanying dataset.
Read down the first two rows and then down the third. The top 0.1% hold 71.16% of total assets in listed equity and private business equity combined, and 7.65% in real estate. The bottom half hold 7.28% in those same risk-capital categories and 46.64% in real estate, plus another 20.39% in cars and household goods.
The defined benefit line is the one nobody expects. Pension entitlements represent 15.90% of total assets for the 50th–90th percentile band and 1.18% for the top 0.1%. For a large part of middle America, the single biggest financial asset is a claim on a pension fund — an asset that cannot be sold, borrowed against, or passed to children.
Who Owns the Stock Market?
| Group | Share of household equities, Q1 2026 | Share of household equities, Q1 2025 | Share of private business equity, Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 0.1% | 24.17% | 23.84% | 28.26% |
| Top 1% | 50.13% | 49.81% | 52.92% |
| Top 10% | 87.33% | 87.13% | 84.64% |
| Bottom 50% | 1.06% | 1.05% | 1.01% |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research calculations from Federal Reserve DFA levels for corporate equities and mutual fund shares, Q1 2026 and Q1 2025 releases. Private business equity shares use the residual derivation described in the methodology.
The top 1% share of household-held equities crossed 50% between these two observations. That is not a statement about a long historical first — the DFA quarterly series would need a full read to support any such claim, and this page does not make one. It is a statement about a threshold being passed in a twelve-month window in which every tier’s equity holdings rose and the top tier’s rose fastest.
Sarah Davis: Ask which asset class transmits monetary policy to household balance sheets and this table answers it. A twenty percent equity rally adds roughly ten percent to the top 0.1%’s total assets and roughly one percent to the bottom half’s. The same policy, the same market, two completely different balance-sheet responses. Anyone modelling a wealth effect on consumption from an aggregate equity index is modelling the top decile and calling it the country.
Leverage Runs the Other Way
| Wealth group | Liabilities as share of total assets, Q1 2026 |
|---|---|
| Top 0.1% | 0.95% |
| 99th–99.9th | 2.50% |
| 90th–99th | 6.10% |
| 50th–90th | 14.59% |
| Bottom 50% | 58.77% |
| All households | 10.31% |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research calculations from Federal Reserve DFA total liabilities and total assets by wealth percentile group, Q1 2026.
The bottom half of US households carry 30.42% of all household liabilities against 2.45% of net worth. The top 1% carry 5.05% of liabilities. Debt in the United States is concentrated almost exactly where wealth is not — which is why an interest-rate cycle and an equity cycle move different halves of the distribution.
RCX: The Axis Risk Capital Exposure Index
Wealth reports count dollars. What they do not measure is the structural difference in what those dollars are invested in, tier by tier, on a single comparable scale. Axis Intelligence Research publishes that measure here.
RCX — Risk Capital Exposure Index quantifies how much of a wealth tier’s balance sheet is committed to market and entrepreneurial risk rather than capital preservation.
Formula
RCX = 100 × [0.45·L + 0.35·B + 0.20·(1 − P)] ÷ [same expression for all US households at the fixed Q1 2025 base]
Components and weights
| Component | Definition | Weight | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| L | Corporate equities and mutual fund shares ÷ total assets | 45% | Listed equity is the dominant and most liquid risk exposure |
| B | Equity in noncorporate business ÷ total assets | 35% | Private business equity carries risk plus illiquidity and concentration |
| P | (Deposits + money market funds + debt securities + life insurance reserves + annuities) ÷ total assets, entered as (1 − P) | 20% | Capital-preservation assets are the direct offset to risk exposure |
Base: all US households at March 31, 2025 = 100. Weights are fixed. Every input is a Federal Reserve DFA level.
RCX Readings by Wealth Tier
| Wealth group | RCX Q1 2025 | RCX Q1 2026 | L (Q1 2026) | B (Q1 2026) | P (Q1 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 0.1% | 145.55 | 148.57 | 52.67% | 18.49% | 15.36% |
| 99th–99.9th | 130.93 | 134.25 | 46.57% | 13.29% | 15.25% |
| 90th–99th | 101.13 | 104.21 | 30.47% | 7.80% | 17.02% |
| 50th–90th | 71.55 | 72.77 | 10.62% | 3.94% | 15.45% |
| Bottom 50% | 65.23 | 66.19 | 5.67% | 1.61% | 10.67% |
| All US households | 100.00 | 102.96 | 28.42% | 8.54% | 15.70% |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Federal Reserve DFA levels, Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 releases. First published by Axis Intelligence Research.
Three readings carry the analysis. The top 0.1% sit at 148.57, roughly 2.24 times the bottom half’s 66.19. Every tier rose over the year, and the all-household reading moved from 100.00 to 102.96 — American household balance sheets in aggregate became more risk-exposed, not less, during a period when short-term rates made capital preservation better paid than it had been in a decade.
The spread between the top and bottom readings widened marginally, from 80.32 points to 82.38. The gap in what people own is moving more slowly than the gap in how much they own, which is worth holding onto: composition is a stickier variable than valuation.
Scope of RCX. The index measures balance-sheet composition, not investment skill, returns or risk-adjusted performance. It cannot see holdings inside pooled vehicles beyond the DFA’s own classification, does not separate direct equity from fund exposure, and treats defined benefit entitlements as neither risk capital nor capital preservation because a household controls neither the allocation nor the redemption. The B component depends on the residual derivation set out in the methodology. RCX will be recomputed each quarter the Fed publishes new DFA levels, on the same fixed Q1 2025 base.
PCR: How Close Is the Top 1% to the Bottom 90%?
PCR — Parity Crossover Ratio is a single number: the net worth of the top 1% of US households divided by the net worth of the bottom 90%.
PCR = $55.033 trillion ÷ $55.751 trillion = 0.9871 at March 31, 2026, against 0.9446 at March 31, 2025.
A reading of 1.00 would mean 1.35 million households hold as much as 121.6 million households combined. At 0.9871 the two aggregates are within $718 billion of each other — about four-tenths of one percent of total US household net worth.
PCR moved 4.25 points in a year for a reason the allocation table already explained. Top 1% net worth grew 10.52% over the four quarters while bottom 90% net worth grew 5.76%, and the difference is almost entirely equity exposure: households in the top 1% hold half their assets in a market that rose, and households in the bottom 90% hold their assets in houses, cars and pension claims that did not rise as fast.
Sarah Davis: PCR is deliberately crude, and that is the point of it. Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves are correct and unquotable. A ratio approaching parity between 1.35 million households and 121.6 million households is a sentence anyone can check against the Fed’s own release in about four minutes. If it crosses 1.00, that is a genuine event with a date attached, and this page will carry the date.
The 50th–90th Percentile: America’s Mass Affluent, Measured
The segment the wealth-management industry markets to as “mass affluent” has no regulatory definition either, and it maps closely onto the DFA’s 50th–90th percentile band: 54,071,475 households, 40.01% of the country, holding $51.485 trillion, or 29.59% of national household net worth, at a mean of $952,163.
Its balance sheet is the inverse of the top 0.1%’s. Real estate is 37.57% of total assets. Defined benefit and defined contribution pensions together are 24.48%. Listed equity is 10.62%. Consumer durables — vehicles, appliances, furniture — are 6.26%, more than half the equity allocation.
Growth tells the same story. Net worth in this band rose 5.64% over the year to March 31, 2026, against 11.54% for the top 0.1% and 7.98% for all households. Mean net worth per household rose 4.93%, because the band added households as well as dollars.
This is the segment that determines whether the advisory industry’s growth assumptions hold, and it is a fundamentally different client than the one the product catalogue is built for. Advisory capacity, fee structures and the advisor headcount serving these households are covered in US Wealth Management Statistics 2026.
What the IRS Data Shows About the Very Top
The DFA describes households. For individuals at the extreme top, the only federal source is the IRS Statistics of Income Personal Wealth Study, which estimates the wealth of the living from estate tax returns using the estate multiplier technique. Its most recent published estimate covers 2019. [Older data — the study is periodic, and no more recent year has been released.]
In 2019 there were an estimated 249,364 US adults with gross assets of $11.4 million or more, holding $7.571 trillion in gross assets and $7.218 trillion in net worth, per the IRS Statistics of Income Personal Wealth Study. Of those, 147,582 were male and 101,782 female. A subset of 20,209 individuals held net worth of $50 million or more, accounting for $3.058 trillion.
Portfolio Allocation of US Top Wealthholders, 2019
| Asset class | Share of total assets | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Publicly traded stock | 22.0% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Business assets | 17.3% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Closely held stock | 11.9% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Limited partnerships, hedge funds, private equity | 10.4% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Cash assets | 7.7% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Retirement assets | 5.0% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
| Personal residence | 3.6% | IRS SOI Personal Wealth Study |
Source: IRS, Statistics of Income Division, Personal Wealth Study, April 2024, covering tax year 2019. Individuals with gross estates of at least $11.4 million.
Publicly traded and closely held stock together are 33.87% of total assets by Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation, and the personal residence is 3.6% — close to the DFA’s 7.65% real estate share for the top 0.1% once other real estate is added back. Two collections, seven years apart, built on completely different methods, describing the same shape.
Debts were 4.66% of gross assets. Geographically, California held 38,202 of these individuals, Florida 20,697, Texas 20,117 and New York 18,816. Per capita the leader was North Dakota, where 0.16% of adults cleared the $11.4 million line against 0.08% nationally.
The count grew 66.7% between 2013 and 2019 in constant dollars, against 5.7% growth in the adult population over the same period.
Sarah Davis: The 10.4% in limited partnerships, hedge funds and private equity is the line worth watching, and it was 7.2% in 2013. Access to those vehicles is gated by accreditation thresholds, which is a regulatory fact rather than a preference — the allocation gap between the top wealth tiers and everyone else is partly a rules gap. Private-market flows into these structures are tracked in Blackstone Statistics, and the asset-management side of the same money in BlackRock Statistics.
What Changes These Numbers in Late 2026
One event will reset most of this page.
The Federal Reserve fielded the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances through 2025, with summary results scheduled for publication in late 2026. Every figure on this page that rests on the DFA rests indirectly on the 2022 SCF, because the DFA interpolates and forecasts from the most recent survey to produce its quarterly estimates. When the 2025 microdata lands, the Fed re-benchmarks the entire DFA series, the suppressed minimum wealth cutoffs become available for a 2025 reference quarter, and the wealth ladder above will be restated for every quarter since 2022.
Axis Intelligence Research will re-baseline RCX and PCR against the revised series and publish both the old and new readings rather than overwriting the history.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure on this page was retrieved from a primary source on September 3, 2026. Household wealth levels, allocations and household counts by wealth percentile group come from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System’s Distributional Financial Accounts, Levels of Wealth by Wealth Percentile Groups, Q1 2026 release dated June 18, 2026, accessed through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis release table. Minimum wealth cutoffs come from DFA series WFRBLN09304, WFRBL99T999309 and WFRBLTP1311. Aggregate household net worth comes from the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1), series BOGZ1FL192090005Q, TNWBSHNO and TABSHNO. Individual top-wealthholder data comes from the IRS Statistics of Income Division’s Personal Wealth Study for tax year 2019, published April 2024. No figure on this page comes from a wealth-management consultancy estimate, a market-sizing report or a secondary aggregator.
Derivation of private business equity. The Federal Reserve suppressed the “Equity in Noncorporate Business” series in the Q1 2026 DFA release. Axis Intelligence Research derives it per tier as a residual: financial assets minus the sum of the published financial-asset components (deposits, money market fund shares, debt securities, loans held as assets, corporate equities and mutual fund shares, life insurance reserves, annuities, defined contribution pension entitlements, defined benefit pension entitlements, miscellaneous assets). The derivation validates: reconstructed asset categories sum to published total assets exactly for three of five tiers and within $1 million for the other two.
Reconciliation. The Axis sum of net worth across the five DFA percentile groups is $174,009,619 million against the published Z.1 household total of $174,009,620 million, a difference of $1 million on $174 trillion.
Formulas. RCX and PCR are defined in full in the sections above, with every input, weight and base disclosed. All arithmetic was computed twice — in floating point and in exact rational arithmetic using Python’s fractions.Fraction — and every number in this article exists as a row in the accompanying CSV with its source URL and retrieval date.
Scope. The DFA measures households, not individuals; a two-person household appears once. It excludes the institutional and nonprofit sector that the headline Z.1 series includes. Percentile groups are defined by wealth rank at each quarter, so a group’s composition changes between quarters and year-over-year growth for a group is not the experience of a fixed set of households. Quarterly DFA values between survey years are interpolated and forecast from the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances rather than directly observed. IRS estate-multiplier estimates cover individuals above the estate tax filing threshold only, are pre-audit, and reflect valuations prepared for tax purposes, which the IRS itself notes tend toward the conservative for hard-to-value assets.
Disclosure. Axis Intelligence Research has no commercial relationship with any wealth manager, adviser or financial institution named on this page.
About This Dataset
us-high-net-worth-statistics.csv contains 365 observations covering US household net worth, household counts, asset and liability levels and allocation shares across five wealth percentile groups and three combined groups, minimum wealth cutoffs, Z.1 aggregate reconciliation, IRS top-wealthholder counts and portfolio allocation, and the two Axis-calculated metrics (RCX and PCR), spanning Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 with 2019 and Q3 2022 reference observations.
Each row carries metric, value, unit, as-of date, geography, segment, source organisation, source document, absolute source URL, retrieval date, a primary-source flag, an Axis-calculated flag, a method note stating the formula for every calculated row, and licence.
Released under CC BY 4.0. Reuse, redistribution and adaptation are permitted with attribution to Axis Intelligence Research.
Citation
APA — Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). US high-net-worth statistics 2026: Households, wealth tiers and portfolio allocation. https://axis-intelligence.com/us-high-net-worth-statistics/
MLA — Axis Intelligence Research. “US High-Net-Worth Statistics 2026: Households, Wealth Tiers and Portfolio Allocation.” Axis Intelligence, 3 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/us-high-net-worth-statistics/.
Chicago — Axis Intelligence Research. “US High-Net-Worth Statistics 2026: Households, Wealth Tiers and Portfolio Allocation.” Axis Intelligence, September 3, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/us-high-net-worth-statistics/.
Last updated: September 3, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an official US government definition of a high-net-worth individual?
No. No federal statute or statistical programme defines “high-net-worth individual.” The $1 million investable-assets threshold in common use originates in private wealth-management segmentation. The closest regulatory analogue is the qualified client test under the Investment Advisers Act, which Form ADV uses for adviser client-type reporting and which sits far above $1 million. Federal wealth data is published by percentile group, not by dollar-threshold segment, which is why this page reports the Federal Reserve’s wealth ladder.
Why do wealth reports disagree about how many US millionaires there are?
Because they are counting different units against different definitions. Consultancy reports typically count individuals by investable assets, excluding the primary residence and using proprietary models. The Federal Reserve counts households by total net worth, including housing and pension entitlements. The IRS counts individuals by gross estate above the estate tax filing threshold, using estate returns. A household with two adults and $3 million appears as one unit in the Fed data, potentially two in a consultancy count, and in neither IRS category.
Does the $174 trillion household net worth figure include home equity and pensions?
Yes to both. The Federal Reserve’s measure is total assets minus total liabilities, where assets include owner-occupied real estate at market value, consumer durables, and defined benefit and defined contribution pension entitlements. That is why real estate is 25.11% of all household assets and pension entitlements 16.23%. It excludes Social Security benefits, which are not treated as household assets in the national accounts and which would substantially change the distribution if they were.
What share of the US stock market do wealthy households own?
Of corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by US households, the top 1% held 50.13% at March 31, 2026 and the top 10% held 87.33%, per Axis Intelligence Research calculations from Federal Reserve DFA levels. This measures household holdings only. It excludes equities held by pension funds, insurers, foreign investors and other institutional holders, which together own a large share of US listed equity outside the household sector.
Why is the Federal Reserve’s top 1% wealth threshold four years old?
The DFA publishes minimum wealth cutoffs only for quarters anchored to a Survey of Consumer Finances field period, because a percentile threshold requires household-level microdata rather than distributed aggregates. The most recent published cutoffs are for Q3 2022. New cutoffs become available when the 2025 survey results are released, expected in late 2026. Applying an aggregate growth rate to a 2022 threshold produces a number with no statistical standing, which is why this page reports the cutoffs with their date and does not extrapolate them.
How does the portfolio of a top 0.1% household differ from a median household?
Structurally, not just in scale. Top 0.1% households hold 52.67% of total assets in listed equity and 18.49% in private business equity, with 7.65% in real estate. Households in the 50th–90th percentile band hold 10.62% in listed equity, 3.94% in private business equity and 37.57% in real estate, plus 24.48% in pension entitlements they do not direct. Axis Intelligence Research’s Risk Capital Exposure Index reads 148.57 for the first group and 72.77 for the second.
Are high-net-worth households more leveraged than everyone else?
The reverse, sharply. Liabilities equal 0.95% of total assets for the top 0.1% and 58.77% for the bottom half. In aggregate the bottom 50% of households carry 30.42% of all household liabilities against 2.45% of net worth, while the top 1% carry 5.05% of liabilities against 31.63% of net worth. Household debt in the United States sits almost entirely outside the wealth tiers this page describes.
Which US states have the highest concentration of very wealthy residents?
By count, IRS data for 2019 places California first with 38,202 individuals holding net worth of $11.4 million or more, followed by Florida (20,697), Texas (20,117) and New York (18,816). Per capita the ranking inverts toward smaller states: North Dakota led with 0.16% of adults above that threshold and Wyoming followed at 0.14%, against 0.08% nationally. These are the most recent state-level federal estimates available; the study is periodic and 2019 is the latest published year.
How much of the wealth gap is asset prices rather than saving?
Over the year to March 31, 2026, net worth rose 11.54% for the top 0.1% and 5.64% for the 50th–90th percentile band, while household equity holdings rose 16.30% in aggregate. Because the top 0.1% hold 52.67% of assets in equities and the middle band holds 10.62%, most of that divergence is valuation reaching different balance sheets, not differential saving. The DFA cannot decompose flows from revaluation at the percentile level, so this is a directional reading rather than an attribution.
What is the difference between the top 1% by wealth and the top 1% by income?
They are different populations measured by different agencies. This page reports wealth percentiles from the Federal Reserve, ranking households by net worth at a point in time. Income percentiles come from IRS individual return data and Census surveys and rank by annual flow. The overlap is partial: a retired household can hold top-1% wealth on modest income, and a high earner early in a career can sit well below the 90th wealth percentile. Conflating the two is the single most common error in coverage of this subject.