Baby Boomer Wealth Statistics (2026)

Baby boomers are the wealthiest generation in the United States by a wide margin. As of the first quarter of 2025, the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts put boomers at about 51% of all household wealth, roughly $85 trillion, more than Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z combined (see the chart below).

Gen X holds about 26% (near $44 trillion), while millennials and Gen Z together hold only about 11% (near $18 trillion). The Silent Generation and older cohorts, now shrinking, account for the remaining slice of roughly 12%.

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. Americans over age 70 now hold about 31% of household wealth, up from 19% in 1989, according to Federal Reserve data cited by the St. Louis Fed. 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 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, net worth peaked in the boomer-age 65-74 bracket at a median of about $409,900, with the 55-64 group at roughly $364,500 (see the chart and table below). One analysis pegs the median boomer household (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 $1.79 million, more than four times the median. 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 $85 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 Fed data, but the ratio, roughly 14 to 1, is stark.

Boomers do not just own homes, they own the market. Analyses of Federal Reserve data estimate boomers hold about 54% of US stocks, worth more than $25 trillion, while millennials owned around 8% ($3.9 trillion). Households over 70 now own about 33% of all stocks and mutual funds, up from 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 2025, the average 401(k)-type balance was about $299,442 for participants 65 and older and $271,320 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 $95,425. 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 roughly $2,083 by May 2026 (SSA).

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 9.9% in 2024, up from 9.7% in 2023, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts medical and other costs, put it at 15% (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 28.7 million people of all ages above the supplemental poverty line in 2024, more than any other program.

All this wealth is about to move. Cerulli projects an $84.4 trillion Great Wealth Transfer through 2045, with about $72.6 trillion going to heirs and $11.9 trillion to charity (see the chart and table below). Boomer households supply more than $53 trillion of it, about 63% of the total.

The flow is highly concentrated: high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth households, just 1.5% of all households, account for $35.8 trillion (42%) of the transfers. 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.