The average American family is worth more than a million bucks

Aided by a stock market boom, a private assets boom, an AI boom, and a still elevated — if a little bit frozen — housing market, America’s rich just keep getting richer.

Indeed, per data from the Federal Reserve, America’s households now hold a whopping $167 trillion in wealth, as of the end of the second quarter. With the Census Bureau estimating that there are about 132 million households in America, that means the average US family is worth more than a million bucks — a fact that’s been going viral on social media in recent weeks.

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But if that’s true, why doesn’t it feel that way for the average American?

For one, measures of economic confidence are still lingering below prepandemic levels, with rock-bottom ratings more common for families from the bottom two-thirds of income than during the 2008 financial crisis, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey found.

Top-heavy fractions

But, of course, the distribution of wealth is what matters most, with 14 of the 15 richest people in the world being American, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, helping push the nation’s average wealth up at a record pace.

According to the Federal Reserve, America’s top 1% now own $52 trillion as of the second quarter, nearly a third of the nation’s total wealth and as much as the whole of the bottom 90% (who own ~$54 trillion), thanks to skyrocketing stock market and home prices in the past few decades.

To put it simply: a simple mean average is not the best way to think about statistics when discussing populations that include very large outliers, such as the half-trillionaire Elon Musk. The median — if we lined every American household up in order of wealth and took the middle value — is much more accurate.

Unfortunately, good data on median household wealth is hard to come by. In 2022, however, Fed data estimated it at $193,000. That’s probably gone up a bit since then, but it suggests the true “typical” American household, at the 50th percentile of America’s wealth ladder, is worth closer to ~$200,000. And, for families further down the ladder, wealth tends to build via their home equity — which is typically much more illiquid and less likely to make them feel “richer,” even if it has appreciated.