Wealth concentration
US Household Wealth by Percentile (2025)
Source: Data Benchmarks Synthesized from the Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts
US households collectively hold roughly $180+ trillion in net worth. Split by percentile band, that pool is dominated by the top 10%: the top 1% alone holds $55.1 trillion (30.6%), and the next 9% (the 90th–99th percentile) holds another $65.9 trillion (36.6%) — together, two-thirds of every dollar of American household wealth.
Four tiers, one lopsided pool
The middle tier — households between the 50th and 90th percentile, roughly $193K to $1.9M in net worth — holds $54.5 trillion, or 30.3% of the pool. That leaves the bottom half of American households, everyone under $193K in net worth, splitting just $4.5 trillion, or 2.5% of the total. The top 10% of households control over two-thirds (67.2%) of the nation's financial assets.
Composition, not just quantity, differs by tier
The bottom 50% hold what wealth they have primarily in real estate equity and durable goods — a home, a car, furniture. The top 1%, by contrast, leans heavily into equities and business ownership: assets that generate passive income (dividends, capital appreciation, distributions) rather than assets that mostly just avoid rent or replacement cost. That composition difference is arguably more important than the raw net-worth number — see US Net Worth by Decile for the entry-point thresholds for each tier.
Why this matters for your RatRace Score
Two households with identical net worth can have wildly different RatRace Scores if one holds income-producing equities and the other holds an equal amount of home equity and depreciating durable goods. If your goal is escaping the rat race, the composition of your net worth — how much of it is actively throwing off passive income — matters more than which percentile band you land in.
See how much of your net worth is actually working for you.
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