Wealth Inequality by Age in the Post‑Pandemic Era

Benjamin Lahey, Rajashri Chakrabarti and Natalia Emanuel

No 2024027b, Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: Following our post on racial and ethnic wealth gaps, here we turn to the distribution of wealth across age groups, focusing on how the picture has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. As of 2019, individuals under 40 years old held just 4.9 percent of total U.S. wealth despite comprising 37 percent of the adult population. Conversely, individuals over age 54 made up a similar share of the population and held 71.6 percent of total wealth. Since 2019, we find a slight narrowing of these wealth disparities across age groups, likely driven by expanded ownership of financial assets among younger Americans.

Keywords: inequality; age; COVID-19; COVID-19 pandemic; wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 G1 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-02-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-inv
Note: Editor’s note: Since this post was first published, percentages cited in the first paragraph have been corrected. (February 7, 1pm)
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