Baby Boomer Wealth Statistics (2026)

Baby boomers are the wealthiest generation in the United States by a wide margin. As of the second quarter of 2026, the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts put boomers at about 52.5% of all household wealth, roughly $97.4 trillion of $185.7 trillion, more than Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z combined (see the chart below).

Gen X holds about 25.7% (near $47.7 trillion), while millennials and Gen Z together hold only about 11.2% (near $20.8 trillion). The Silent Generation and older cohorts, now shrinking, account for the remaining 10.7% (near $19.8 trillion). Boomers' share has edged up, from 51.5% in Q1 2025, as the Silent Generation's share falls.

What makes the concentration striking is how it compares with population. Boomers are only about 20% of the adult population but own roughly half the wealth, so their share of assets runs at more than double their share of people.

This tilt has grown over time. Households headed by someone 70 or older held 33.6% of household wealth in Q2 2026, up from 18.9% in 1989, according to the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts. An aging population and decades of rising asset prices have steadily shifted wealth toward the oldest households.

Aggregate wealth hides how the typical household actually lives. In the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, released in October 2026, households aged 65-74 had a median net worth of $431,300 and those 75 and older $504,900, up 37% from 2022 after inflation, making the oldest group the wealthiest by median for the first time in several surveys (see the chart and table below). The 55-64 group, the youngest boomers, sat at $411,900. An earlier analysis of the 2022 survey put the median boomer household (then ages 58-76) at about $432,200.

Averages tell a very different story because they are pulled up by the very wealthy: the mean net worth for the 65-74 group was about $1.90 million in 2025, more than four times the median. The Fed attributes most of the gain for families 75 and older to higher retirement account values. The typical boomer is comfortable, not rich, and the headline trillions belong disproportionately to a small slice at the top.

Boomer wealth is far from evenly shared. The top 10% of boomers hold roughly 71% of the generation's total wealth, so the $97 trillion figure describes a group with enormous internal inequality rather than a uniformly rich cohort.

Education is one of the sharpest dividing lines. A boomer with a bachelor's degree or higher had a median net worth near $1.08 million, versus about $239,800 for a high school graduate and just $77,200 for those without a diploma (see the table below). These are secondary analyses of 2022 Fed data, but the ratio, roughly 14 to 1, is stark.

Boomers do not just own homes, they own the market. The Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts put boomers at 54.5% of household holdings of corporate equities and mutual fund shares in Q2 2026, about $35.2 trillion, while millennials and Gen Z owned 9.3% ($6.0 trillion). Households 70 and older now own 40.5% of all household stocks and mutual funds, up from about 22% in 2006 (see the table below).

That concentration is why the Great Wealth Transfer matters for markets: a large share of equity ownership sits with people who will draw it down or pass it on over the next two decades. So far, worries that boomer selling would tank stocks have not materialized, in part because the wealthiest owners spend a small fraction of their portfolios each year.

Formal retirement accounts hold only part of boomer wealth, and the balances are more modest than the aggregate numbers suggest. In Vanguard's How America Saves 2026 (year-end 2025), the average 401(k)-type balance was about $330,186 for participants 65 and older and $305,006 for the 55-64 group (see the table below).

Medians are far lower because a handful of large accounts inflate the average: the median balance for the 65-plus group was just $103,202, and $107,269 for ages 55-64. Many boomers also hold savings in IRAs, pensions, and home equity that these plan figures miss, but the gap between mean and median is a reminder that a lot of near-retirees have saved relatively little.

Housing is the foundation of boomer wealth. The homeownership rate for Americans 65 and older is about 79%, well above the roughly 66% national rate, and it peaks near 84% right around age 65. Boomers make up an estimated 38% of all homeowner households.

Home equity is a major, and relatively illiquid, part of the picture: it represents about 23% of boomer assets on one estimate. Years of price appreciation have turned longtime owners into paper millionaires in many markets, even when their cash savings are thin.

Boomers are staying put, which shapes the whole housing market. Surveys find that about 78% of Americans over 60 want to remain in their current home, and roughly 54% of boomer owners say they never plan to sell and expect to live there for the rest of their lives.

The result is a graying of ownership: the median age of a US homeowner rose from about 54 in 2010 to roughly 57.5 by 2024. That reluctance to sell keeps starter homes off the market and is one reason younger buyers face such tight inventory.

The image of the debt-free retiree is increasingly out of date. Over roughly the past three decades, the share of homeowners aged 65-79 carrying a mortgage rose from 24% to 41%, and among those 80 and older it jumped from 3% to 31%, with median mortgage balances up several hundred percent (see the table below).

Boomers also carry about $25,800 of non-mortgage debt on average, spanning cars, credit cards, and personal loans. An AARP survey found 65% of indebted people 65 and older consider their debt a problem. For households on fixed incomes, carrying debt into retirement is often a necessity rather than a strategy.

Spending falls in retirement but does not collapse. BLS Consumer Expenditure data show households headed by someone 65 or older spent about $61,432 in 2024, below the roughly $77,000 average for all households, as work-related and child-rearing costs fade.

The exception is health care, which rises steadily with age and takes a growing bite of the budget for the 65-74 and 75-plus groups. That is a big reason official and supplemental poverty measures diverge so much for older Americans: seniors spend far more of their income on medical care than younger households do.

For most boomers in retirement, Social Security is the backbone of income, not a supplement. The average benefit for a retired worker was about $1,907 a month in 2025 (near $22,900 a year) and had risen to $2,088.79 by September 2026 (SSA Monthly Statistical Snapshot).

The program was designed to replace only about 40% of pre-retirement earnings, so households leaning on it alone face a real gap. That dependence is exactly why the wide distribution of boomer wealth matters: the median boomer relies heavily on a modest, fixed benefit, while the top decile lives off portfolios worth millions.

Beneath the wealthiest-generation headline sits real hardship. The official poverty rate for people 65 and older was 9.8% in 2025, down 0.2 percentage points from 2024, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts medical and other costs, put it at 15.4%, the widest gap between the two measures of any age group (Census Bureau).

More than 9 million older Americans struggle to cover basics like food and medicine. Social Security is the main reason the number is not far higher: it lifted about 28.8 million people of all ages above the supplemental poverty line in 2025, more than any other program, and over 70% of them (20.9 million) were 65 or older.

All this wealth is about to move. Cerulli projects a $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer through 2048, with about $105 trillion going to heirs and $18 trillion to charity (see the chart and table below). Baby boomers and older generations supply nearly $100 trillion of it, about 81% of the total. The projection replaced Cerulli's earlier estimate of $84.4 trillion through 2045.

Much of it moves sideways first: $54 trillion is expected to pass to spouses, nearly $40 trillion of it to widowed women in the boomer and older generations. The flow is also highly concentrated: high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth households, just 2% of all households, account for $62 trillion, more than half of the transfers. Millennials stand to inherit the most over 25 years ($46 trillion), while Gen X inherits the most over the next 10 ($14 trillion). For most families the inheritance will be modest or nonexistent, which is why the transfer is more likely to widen wealth gaps than close them.

For boomers, the data argues for turning illiquid, concentrated wealth into a durable retirement plan: much of the generation's net worth sits in home equity and a handful of appreciated stocks, so diversification, a withdrawal strategy, and an estate plan matter more than chasing returns. The gap between the median and the average is a reminder to plan around your own numbers, not the headlines.

For heirs and younger investors, the takeaway is not to wait on an inheritance that may never come or arrive late in life. Time in the market is the one advantage younger generations still hold: adjusted for inflation, they are on track to build more wealth per person than boomers did at the same age, but only if they start early and stay invested. The goal for every generation is the same, a real return that compounds over decades.