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The Top 1% vs. the Bottom 50%
Share of U.S. household net worth held by the richest 1% and the bottom 50%, quarterly, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
From the Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts. Households are ranked by net worth.
The richest one percent of American households set against the poorer half. The top group holds many times the bottom half’s share, and the gap widens when stock prices rise, because the top holds most of the shares.
What this chart reads
- Share of US Household Wealth Held by the Top 1%as “Top 1%”latest 2026-06-30
- Share of US Household Wealth Held by the Bottom 50%as “Bottom 50%”latest 2026-06-30
Sources
Share of US Household Wealth Held by the Top 1%. Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Distributional Financial Accounts (dfa-networth-shares.csv). Quarterly, public domain.
Share of US Household Wealth Held by the Bottom 50%. Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Distributional Financial Accounts (dfa-networth-shares.csv). Quarterly, public domain.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.