Middle Class- Declining Total Family Wealth

The middle class has been in a slow decline for over 50 years in the United States. It is easy to see in media, television, and in day-to-day life that working class populations are working harder than ever to make ends meet and the upper ultra-rich class is accumulating a larger and larger portion of the American pie. The age old adage that the rich keep getting richer, holds true today more than it ever has. The US Congressional Budget Office in a 2022 report documented that the top 1 percent of the US population holds more than 33% of the wealth in the country, while the bottom half of the country’s population held only 2 percent of total wealth. This means that the most well off 1% of our population in America holds 15 times more wealth than all the wealth combined of 50% of the country. The concerning fact is that this trend of unequal wealth is worsening rapidly. Even in the past two decades there has been surprising widening of the wealth gap between classes. In 1992 the top 10% of America held a total family wealth that was about equivalent to the total family wealth of the bottom 90% of the country. In only a 25 year span, now the top 10% total family wealth is now more than triple that of the bottom 90% of the country, see Graph #1 below.

Graph #1

Congressional Budget Office-Nonpartisan Analysis for the U.S. Congress. Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989 to 2019. www.cbo.gov/publication/57598