Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962-2013: What Happened over the Great Recession?

Edward N. Wolff

No 20733, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted by 44 percent over years 2007 to 2010, almost double the drop in housing prices. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was also up sharply. Relative indebtedness expanded, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. The sharp fall in median net worth and the rise in overall wealth inequality over these years are traceable primarily to the high leverage of middle class families and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth also widened considerably. Households under age 45 saw their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply. Rather remarkably, there was virtually no change in median wealth from 2010 to 2013 despite the rebound in asset prices. The proximate cause was the high dissavings of the middle class, though their debt continued to fall. Wealth inequality and the racial and ethnic wealth gap also remained largely unchanged, though there was some recovery of net worth for young households.

JEL-codes: D31 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: LS PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published as Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962 to 2013: What Happened over the Great Recession? Edward N. Wolff RSF 2016 2:6, 24-43

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20733.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:nbr:nberwo:20733

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20733

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().