A Rolling Tide: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in the US, 1989-2001

Arthur B. Kennickell

Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute

Abstract: From 1989 to 2001, wealth in real terms increased overall among US families. But characterizing distributional changes is much more complex; it depends on the specific questions asked. For example, there is evidence both from Forbes data on the 400 wealthiest Americans and from the SCF, which explicitly excludes families in the Forbes list, that wealth grew relatively strongly at the very top of the distribution. At the same time, the share of total household wealth held by the Forbes group rose. However, while the point estimate of the share of total wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of families, as measured by the SCF, also rose, the change is not statistically significant. In 2001, the division of wealth observed in the SCF attributed about a third each to the wealthiest one percent, the next wealthiest nine percent, and the remaining 90 percent of the population. The paper decomposes wealth holdings and distributional shifts in a variety of other ways. Particular attention is given to families with negative net worth, families of older baby boomers, and African American families.

Date: 2003-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_393.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_393

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper Archive from Levy Economics Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elizabeth Dunn ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).