(NewsNation) — In 2023, the top 1% of Americans owned 30% of the country’s total net worth, amounting to $43 trillion, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
For decades, over 95% of the country’s wealth has been concentrated among the wealthiest Americans, even as the median net worth for individual households jumped 37% between 2020 and 2022.
In 1990, the top 50% of Americans held 96.6% of wealth, less than one percentage point lower than the same group’s share in 2023.
The net worth of the typical U.S. household grew at the fastest pace in more than three decades between 2020 and 2022, while relatively low interest rates at that time made it easier for households to pay their debts, according to a government report from last year.
However, strong performance in financial markets, particularly an outsize gain for the stock market in 2021, also helped entrench existing trends of wealth inequality during the pandemic.
According to a report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the real net worth of white individuals outgrew that of Black and Hispanic individuals by 30 percentage points and 9 percentage points respectively, from the first quarter of 2019 through the second quarter of 2023.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.