Americans are growing richer on average—but not everyone, and not even a little bit equally.
The Fed recently published the results from the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a snapshot of American personal finances taken every three years. Conducted from April to May of 2025, the survey illuminates national wealth trends with detailed polling from roughly 4,300 U.S. households.
According to the latest data, post-pandemic wealth gains are generally decelerating, but families that are older and richer just keep stockpiling more wealth. Younger Americans? They’re not doing so hot.
Americans between age 45 and 54 held an average of $1.24 million in “real” inflation-adjusted dollars in 2025 and actually experienced the largest net worth gains of any of the age categories. For Americans age 55 to 74, inflation-adjusted net worth hovered around $1.88 million, while people age 75 and up were sitting on an average of $1.96 million, notching 10% growth to their wealth across three years.
For younger people, the story couldn’t be more different. People age 35 and younger saw their net worth plunge by 33% from 2022 to 2025. In 2022, Americans under age 35 held an average of $200,800, but by last year that wealth dwindled to only $135,400. Meanwhile, Americans between the ages of 35 and 44 held an average of $682,000 in 2025, up 13% from three years prior.
“Net worth declined substantially for the youngest families, while exhibiting large gains for the oldest,” the survey stated. “ . . . The rise in net worth for the oldest age group is so large relative to younger age groups that, in contrast with the previous few survey years, families aged 75 or older had the largest net worth, exceeding levels by families that are nearly or recently retired.”
Winners and losers
The wealth gap in the U.S. is gaping wider each year. From 2022 to 2025, real median net worth in the U.S. rose by 2%. During the same time period, real mean net worth soared by more than three times that, with gains at the top stretching the average higher.
“Changes in wealth largely reinforced existing patterns of wealth inequality by family characteristics,” the survey states. Young families, renters, and households without a college degree saw their median and sometimes mean wealth drop during the two-year time period. Meanwhile, wealthy and older families experienced large gains across mean and median wealth.
For families on the lower end of the wealth distribution, income offered a slightly more hopeful story. The median household income ticked up 7% to $82,200 between 2022 and 2025, up from $76,900 in 2021. During the same time period, mean household income dropped by 6%, from $155,300 in 2021 to $145,200 in 2024.
“The rise in median income combined with the fall in mean income indicates that the income distribution narrowed between the 2022 and 2025 surveys,” the survey stated. Many American families might be frozen out of the vast gains to net worth enjoyed by the wealthiest households, but income inequality showed some signs of improvement.
