Net Worth by Age Statistics (2026)

The single most important thing to understand about net worth is the gap between the typical household and the average. In the Fed's 2025 survey the median US family net worth was $215,900, but the mean was $1,241,500, almost six times higher.

The average is inflated by a small number of extremely wealthy households, so the median, the household right in the middle, is the far better description of a typical American's wealth.

Wealth builds steadily over a working life. Median net worth climbs from just $33,000 for families under 35 to $411,900 at 55 to 64, $431,300 at 65 to 74 and $504,900 for families 75 and older (see the chart and table below).

That is roughly a fifteenfold difference, which reflects decades of saving, paying down mortgages, rising home equity, and compounding investments. The youngest families lost ground between 2022 and 2025: their median fell 23% and their mean 33%, which the Fed attributes mainly to the unwinding of business equity gains.

Net worth has usually peaked in the 65-to-74 band and then dipped in later life, and the 2022 survey followed that pattern. The 2025 survey broke it: the median for families 75 and older jumped 37% to $504,900, above the 65-to-74 median of $431,300, which fell 4%.

The Fed says the jump was driven mainly by higher retirement-account values rather than by a change in who is in the oldest group. Over a full retirement, spending down savings and home equity is still what a lifetime of accumulated wealth is meant to fund, so this ordering may not hold in every survey.

The mean-versus-median gap widens sharply at the top. Within the top 10% of families, the median net worth was about $4.9 million in 2025 but the mean was about $9.0 million, because a handful of ultra-wealthy families pull the average up (see the table below).

This is why any headline that quotes 'average net worth' overstates how a typical household is doing. Median figures are the honest benchmark.

The distribution is steep. In the 2022 survey (the latest DQYDJ compilation), a net worth of about $27,000 put a household at the 25th percentile, $192,000 at the median, and $658,000 at the 75th (see the table below).

The very top is a different world: it took about $1.9 million to reach the top 10%, $3.8 million for the top 5%, and roughly $13.7 million to enter the top 1%. In 2025 the bottom quarter of families had a median of just $1,700.

What counts as wealthy depends heavily on age. In the 2022 data, at 30 to 34 a median net worth was about $89,000 and the top 1% started near $2.6 million; by 60 to 64, the median was about $393,000 and the top 1% began near $17.9 million (see the table below).

Comparing yourself to your own age group is far more meaningful than to the population as a whole.

Education is one of the strongest predictors of wealth. In 2025, college graduates had a median net worth of $505,400, versus $181,000 for those with some college, $106,700 for high-school graduates, and $18,600 for those without a diploma (see the chart below). The no-diploma median fell 55% from 2022, the largest decline the modern SCF has recorded for that group.

The college-degree median is more than four and a half times the high-school-only figure, which reflects both higher lifetime earnings and greater access to wealth-building assets.

The gaps by race are large and persistent. In 2025 the median net worth was $332,100 for White non-Hispanic families and $677,600 for Asian families, versus $79,600 for Hispanic and $36,800 for Black non-Hispanic families (see the chart below).

That means the typical White family holds about nine times the wealth of the typical Black family, the largest ratio since 2016, after the Black median fell 25% from 2022. The White-Hispanic ratio, a bit more than four, was the smallest on record in the modern SCF. Gaps like these compound across generations through housing, inheritance, and investment access.

Homeownership is the clearest dividing line in American wealth. The median homeowner had a net worth of about $458,900 in 2025, versus $10,600 for the median renter, a gap of more than 40-to-1, wider than the 38-to-1 gap in the 2022 data (see the table below).

It is not only home equity: in the 2022 data, homeowners also held roughly 16 times more in stocks and bonds and 15 times more in business and retirement assets, because owning a home tends to coincide with broader financial stability.

The 2022 survey captured an unusual boom. Median net worth rose 37% in real terms from 2019 to 2022, the largest three-year increase in the survey's modern history, driven by rising home and stock prices and pandemic-era saving.

Gains then were broad-based across income and age groups. The 2025 survey shows the boom cooling: real median net worth rose only 2% from 2022 to 2025 and the mean 7%, with families in the lowest income quintile losing ground (median -6%) while the top income decile's median rose 31% (Fed SCF 2025).

Different government surveys produce different numbers. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances puts the 2025 median at $215,900, while the Census Bureau's SIPP-based measure put the 2024 median household wealth at $204,900 (Census, Wealth of Households: 2024).

The two use different methods and samples; the Fed's SCF is the more commonly cited for wealth, but both tell the same story about the shape of the distribution.

Net worth is simply everything you own minus everything you owe: homes, retirement and brokerage accounts, and cash, less mortgages, student loans, and other debt.

The data shows the biggest drivers of wealth over a lifetime are home equity and retirement accounts, which is why owning a home, contributing to tax-advantaged accounts, and giving investments decades to compound are the through-lines of nearly every high-net-worth household.