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. The median US household net worth is $192,700, but the mean is $1,063,700, more than five 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 $39,040 for households under 35 to a peak of $410,000 for ages 65 to 74 (see the chart and table below).

That is roughly a tenfold difference, reflecting decades of saving, paying down mortgages, rising home equity, and compounding investments.

Net worth does not rise forever. It peaks in the 65-to-74 band and then dips to a median of $334,700 for households 75 and older.

That decline is expected: retirees spend down savings and home equity in later life, which is exactly what a lifetime of accumulated wealth is meant to fund.

The mean-versus-median gap widens sharply at the top. Within the top 10% of households, the median net worth is about $3.8 million but the mean is $7.8 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. A net worth of about $27,000 puts 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 takes 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%.

What counts as wealthy depends heavily on age. At 30 to 34, a median net worth is about $89,000 and the top 1% starts near $2.6 million; by 60 to 64, the median is about $393,000 and the top 1% begins 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. College graduates have a median net worth of $464,400, versus $137,041 for those with some college, $107,000 for high-school graduates, and $38,050 for those without a diploma (see the chart below).

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

The gaps by race are large and persistent. The median net worth is $284,310 for White households and $535,400 for Asian households, versus $62,120 for Hispanic and $44,100 for Black households (see the chart below).

That means the typical White household holds more than six times the wealth of the typical Black household, a gap that compounds across generations through housing, inheritance, and investment access.

Homeownership is the clearest dividing line in American wealth. The median homeowner has a net worth of about $396,000, versus $10,400 for the median renter, a 38-to-1 gap (see the table below).

It is not only home equity: homeowners also hold 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 most recent data 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 were broad-based across income and age groups, though the dollar increases were far larger for households that already held homes and investments.

Different government surveys produce different numbers. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances puts the 2022 median at $192,700, while the Census Bureau's SIPP-based measure puts it lower, at $176,500.

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.