Wealth by Generation Statistics (2026)

US households were worth about $185.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, and baby boomers held more than half of it. The Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts put boomer net worth at $97.4 trillion, a 52.5% share. Gen X held $47.7 trillion (25.7%), millennials and Gen Z $20.8 trillion (11.2%) and the Silent Generation and earlier $19.8 trillion (10.7%) (see the chart and table below).

Together, boomers and the Silent Generation hold 63.1% of household wealth. The Fed assigns a household to a generation by the birth year of its head and groups everyone born in 1981 or later as millennials, so Gen Z households are counted in that group. The data are released quarterly; Q2 2026 came out in September 2026 and the next release is due in December.

Wealth here means net worth: real estate, stocks, pensions, businesses, deposits and other assets, minus mortgages and other debts. The figures are in nominal dollars.

Each generation's share of wealth is very different from its share of households. Using the DFA's household counts, millennials and Gen Z head 50.4 million households, 37.2% of the total, and hold 11.2% of wealth. Boomers head 41.1 million households (30.4%) and hold 52.5%. Gen X is the one generation whose two shares match, at 25.8% of households and 25.7% of wealth.

The Silent Generation is the smallest and wealthiest per head. Its 8.9 million households are 6.6% of the total and hold 10.7% of wealth. Its household count has fallen from 48.6 million in 1989, and its share of wealth has declined every year since.

The DFA starts in the third quarter of 1989, when the Silent Generation and older held 80.1% of household wealth and boomers, then in their 25 to 43 age range, held 19.5% (DFA shares file). Boomers passed the Silent Generation in the second quarter of 2005 and reached their peak share, 57.6%, in the third quarter of 2016 (see the chart and table below).

Since that peak, boomers' share has eased to the low 50s, reaching 51.2% at the end of 2025. It rose again in 2026, from 51.7% in Q1 to 52.5% in Q2. Gen X reached a record 26.3% share at the end of 2025 and passed the Silent Generation in the first quarter of 2018.

The youngest group's share has grown faster than any other in recent years. Millennials and Gen Z held 0.8% of household wealth at the end of 2010, 4.0% at the end of 2019 and 11.2% in Q2 2026 (see the chart below). In dollars, their net worth rose from $4.3 trillion to $20.8 trillion over those six and a half years, almost a fivefold increase in nominal terms.

In Q2 2026 their share passed that of the Silent Generation and earlier for the first time in the series, 11.2% against 10.7%. A quarter earlier it had been 11.0% against 11.3%. Over the year to Q2 2026 their net worth rose 18.5%, against 14.4% for boomers, 10.5% for Gen X and a 1.0% decline for the Silent Generation.

The generations hold very different mixes of assets. For millennials and Gen Z, real estate is 37.9% of everything they own and directly held stocks and mutual funds 20.5%, by our calculation from the DFA levels file. For the Silent Generation it is the reverse: stocks and funds are 45.1% of their assets and real estate 18.7%. Boomers sit between, at 34.7% stocks and 20.2% real estate (see the table below).

Retirement plans follow work history. Defined-contribution plans such as 401(k)s are 12.8% of Gen X assets, the highest of any generation, while defined-benefit pensions are about 10% of both boomer and Gen X assets. Cars and other consumer durables are 8.6% of what the youngest generation owns, more than double the share for any older group.

Boomers own most of the stocks and mutual funds that households hold directly: 54.5% in Q2 2026, or $35.2 trillion. The Silent Generation holds 14.1%, Gen X 22.1% and millennials and Gen Z 9.3% (see the table below). These figures exclude stocks held inside 401(k)-type plans, which the Fed counts separately.

Inside those defined-contribution plans the split is more even. Boomers hold 44.0% of defined-contribution balances and Gen X 40.7%, while millennials and Gen Z hold 13.5%. Boomers also hold 57.2% of the value of traditional defined-benefit pensions.

Debt runs the other way. Millennials and Gen Z owe 42.6% of all household liabilities, including 43.3% of home mortgage debt and 46.3% of consumer credit, which covers credit cards, student loans and auto loans (DFA). Boomers owe 20.8% of household debt and the Silent Generation 2.1%.

Relative to what they own, the youngest generation is far more leveraged. Their debts equal 29.3% of their assets, against 12.8% for Gen X, 4.2% for boomers and 2.1% for the Silent Generation, by our calculation. In dollars, millennial and Gen Z households owed $8.6 trillion in Q2 2026, $6.1 trillion of it in mortgages.

Dividing each generation's net worth by its number of households gives an average. In Q2 2026 that was about $2.37 million for boomer households, $2.22 million for the Silent Generation, $1.37 million for Gen X and $413,000 for millennials and Gen Z, by our calculation from the DFA (see the table below).

These are means, and a small number of very wealthy households pull them far above what a typical household has. The 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances puts the median net worth of all US families at $215,900 against a mean of $1,241,500. Per-household averages are useful for comparing generations with each other, not for judging what an ordinary family owns.

Every generation's average has climbed since the end of 2019. The millennial and Gen Z average rose from about $121,000 to $413,000 and the boomer average from about $1.37 million to $2.37 million, in nominal dollars.

For typical households, the Survey of Consumer Finances is the better guide, though it reports by age and not by generation. In 2025, median net worth was $33,000 for families headed by someone under 35, $155,600 for ages 35 to 44, $253,700 for 45 to 54, $411,900 for 55 to 64, $431,300 for 65 to 74 and $504,900 for 75 and older (Federal Reserve, in 2025 dollars).

The youngest families lost ground after 2022. Their median fell 23% and their mean fell 33%, to $135,400, which the Fed attributes mainly to the unwinding of business equity gains made between 2019 and 2022. Families 75 and older had the largest increase, 37%, and now have the highest median of any age group, driven mainly by retirement accounts.

The 2022 survey had shown the reverse. Between 2019 and 2022 the median for families under 35 rose 143%, the fastest of any group, in 2022 dollars (SCF 2022).

The Census Bureau's household survey gives a second set of medians. In its Wealth of Households: 2024 report, median household wealth was $38,270 for householders under 35, $170,500 for ages 35 to 44, $251,300 for 45 to 54 and $311,700 for 55 to 64.

Wealth peaked at ages 70 to 74, at $426,700, 2.1 times the median for all households of $204,900. Householders 75 and older had $336,000, about 79% of the 70 to 74 figure. Census and Fed medians differ because the surveys sample and measure wealth differently, so they should not be mixed in one series.

Measured at the same age, younger Americans are ahead of their parents. The St. Louis Fed compared each generation when its average age was about 34 and found that millennial and Gen Z households owned $1.35 for every $1 boomers had at that age and $1.23 for every $1 Gen X had (St. Louis Fed, June 2025). In 2024 dollars, average household wealth at age 34 was $347,000 for millennials and Gen Z, $283,000 for Gen X and $257,000 for boomers.

Their share of national wealth was still small at that age. Boomers were 42.2% of households in 1989 and held 19.5% of wealth; Gen X was 28.4% of households in 2007 and held 9.2%; millennials and Gen Z were 35.1% of households in 2024 and held 10.1%. Measured that way, boomers had the smallest shortfall relative to their numbers.

At age 30, Gen X had the highest net worth of the three generations: a mean of $114,737 in 2019 dollars, against $100,163 for millennials and $89,043 for boomers (St. Louis Fed, May 2024). Millennials carried the most education debt at that age, $14,510 on average, against $7,355 for Gen X and $630 for boomers.

Millennials were behind for most of their adult lives. A 2018 Federal Reserve working paper found that in 2016 the average millennial household's real net worth was about $92,000, around 20% less than boomer households in 1989 and nearly 40% less than Gen X households in 2001 (FEDS 2018-080).

The pandemic years changed that. By 2022, median wealth for older millennials (born in the 1980s) was 37% above what a typical life-cycle path would predict, and for younger millennials and older Gen Z (born in the 1990s) 39% above, according to the St. Louis Fed. The 1990s cohort's median more than quadrupled to $41,000 between 2019 and 2022, and its homeownership rate rose from 27.8% to 38.8%. Fed economists have also found that millennials and Gen X are wealthier and save more in housing and stocks than boomers did at the same age (FEDS Notes).

Boomers are also wealthier than earlier generations were at the same stage of life. Pew Research Center found that the median household headed by a boomer, aged 58 to 76 in 2022, had a net worth of $432,200 in 2024 dollars. Households of the same ages in 2001, mostly the Silent Generation, had $335,900, and in 1983, mostly the Greatest Generation, $185,300 (Pew Research Center).

The total is concentrated within the generation too. All boomer households combined owned $77 trillion in 2022, and the top 10% of them held 71% of it. A dedicated page covers boomer finances in more detail: see baby boomer wealth statistics.

Among the wealthy, generations invest differently. Bank of America Private Bank's 2024 study of 1,007 people with at least $3 million in investable assets found that investors aged 21 to 43 had 47% of their portfolios in stocks and bonds, against 74% for those 44 and older, and 17% in alternative investments against 5% (Bank of America, industry survey). Nearly half (49%) of the younger group owned cryptocurrency.

In its 2026 study, Bank of America projects that millennials and Gen X, ages 30 to 61, will inherit nearly $18 trillion over the next decade, and that 53% of wealthy Gen Z and millennial respondents named financial security for their family as a motivation, against 70% of all respondents (Bank of America Private Bank).

Much of the boomer share is expected to change hands over the next two decades. Cerulli Associates, a research firm, projects that $124 trillion will transfer through 2048, $105 trillion to heirs and $18 trillion to charity, with nearly $100 trillion (81%) coming from boomers and older generations (Cerulli, industry estimate).

Cerulli expects millennials to inherit the most over the full period, $46 trillion, while Gen X inherits more in the next ten years, $14 trillion against $8 trillion for millennials. About $54 trillion is expected to pass first to spouses. The full set of estimates is on the great wealth transfer statistics page.

The UBS Global Wealth Report 2026 puts average wealth per US adult at $696,277 at the end of 2025, second in the world, and median wealth per adult at $68,998, 28th (UBS, industry report). UBS does not publish a US breakdown by generation, so the Fed's accounts remain the main source for that.

The gap between the US average and median reflects the same concentration visible inside each generation: a minority of households, most of them older, hold most of the wealth.

In the Fed's data, younger households hold more of their wealth in housing and less in stocks, owe 42.6% of household debt, and have the fastest-growing share of wealth, from a low base. Older generations hold most directly owned stocks, so a move in the stock market changes boomer and Silent Generation wealth the most in dollar terms.

For readers who invest through a brokerage account, Walnut, an AI investing app, can read a connected account and show how its holdings are doing. The statistics on this page describe how US wealth is distributed; they are not investment advice. Related pages: millennial money statistics, Gen Z money statistics and net worth by age.