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Flagship tracker · monthly

Wealth Concentration Tracker

Share of US household wealth held by the top 1%, top 10%, and bottom 50%. Source: Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts plus Thin Gold reconstruction. Latest reading: 2025 Q3.

By Thin Gold

Fig. 1Wealth · Full-Bleed Feature

Wealth Concentration Is Higher Than the First Gilded Age's Peak

Federal Reserve data on U.S. household net worth. The top 1 percent held 31.7 percent of it as of 2025 Q3, the highest share this series has recorded and above the 1928 pre-Depression estimate of 31.0 percent.

TOP 1% SHARE · 31.7% (2025 Q3)
TOP 10% SHARE · 67.2% (2024 Q4)
BOTTOM 50% SHARE · 2.5% (2024 Q4)
POSTWAR LOW (TOP 1%) · 20.0% (1975)
Top 1%, Top 10%, and Bottom 50% shares of U.S. household wealth, 1870 (est.) to 2025 Q3 A line chart of three wealth-share series, 66 readings across 45 periods from 1870 (est.) to 2025 Q3, plotted against real calendar time. Top 1% is drawn as a solid line, Top 10% as a long-dashed line, and Bottom 50% as a short-dashed line. The top 1 percent's share moves from a pre-Depression peak of 31.0 percent in 1928, to a postwar low of 20.0 percent in 1975, to 31.7 percent as of 2025 Q3. FIRST GILDED AGE NEW DEAL POSTWAR LOW SECOND GILDED AGE 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 1875 1900 1925 1950 1975 2000 2025 1928 Pre-Depression peak, 31.0% 1975 Postwar low, 20.0% 2025 Q3 Record high, 31.7% 31.7 % TOP 1% SHARE
Top 1% Top 10% Bottom 50%

Each series is plotted against real calendar time, so the width of a gap on the horizontal axis is the length of the gap in years: the sparse pre-1989 reconstructions are spread across the decades they cover, and the dense quarterly readings after it are compressed into the years they actually occupy. Read against the 1928 pre-Depression estimate of 31.0 percent, the top 1 percent's 31.7 percent as of 2025 Q3 is higher. Dots mark individual readings wherever more than 3 years separate one from the next, so the sparse early decades read as the handful of observations they are and the line between them as the inference it is. Post-1989 readings are Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts; earlier points are Saez‑Zucman and World Inequality Database estimates, and pre-1913 points are historian reconstructions that should be read as ranges rather than exact figures. Full figures are in the data table below.

Source: Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts. Pre-1989 points are Saez‑Zucman and World Inequality Database estimates, historian Census-based reconstructions before 1913; treated as ranges, not exact figures. As of 2025 Q3. Fig. 1
Data table · 45 periods, 66 readings
Share of total U.S. household wealth by group, by period. "n/a" means that series has no reading for that period; no value is interpolated.
Period Top 1% Top 10% Bottom 50%
1870 (est.) 27.0% 72.0% n/a
1890 (est.) 28.5% 75.0% n/a
1900 (est.) 29.0% 85.0% n/a
1913 (est.) 27.0% n/a n/a
1928 31.0% n/a n/a
1935 28.0% n/a n/a
1945 23.0% n/a n/a
1955 22.0% n/a n/a
1955 (est.) n/a 55.0% n/a
1962 21.0% n/a n/a
1970 20.5% n/a n/a
1975 20.0% n/a n/a
1975 (est.) n/a 52.0% n/a
1980 21.5% n/a n/a
1989 Q3 23.0% 60.5% 3.4%
1992 24.2% n/a n/a
1995 25.8% 62.0% 3.2%
1998 28.0% n/a n/a
2000 30.1% 65.1% 3.1%
2002 28.5% n/a n/a
2004 29.3% n/a 2.9%
2006 30.5% n/a 2.8%
2007 n/a 66.8% n/a
2007 Q3 31.0% n/a n/a
2008 Q4 n/a n/a 2.4%
2009 Q1 27.8% n/a n/a
2010 28.5% 65.0% 1.8%
2012 29.4% n/a n/a
2014 30.1% n/a 1.9%
2016 29.8% 65.8% 2.0%
2018 30.5% n/a n/a
2019 n/a 66.2% n/a
2019 Q4 30.5% n/a 2.2%
2020 Q2 29.8% n/a 2.4%
2020 Q4 30.8% n/a n/a
2021 Q2 31.2% n/a n/a
2021 Q4 n/a n/a 2.7%
2022 n/a 66.5% n/a
2022 Q2 30.1% n/a n/a
2022 Q4 n/a n/a 2.6%
2023 Q4 30.8% n/a 2.6%
2024 Q1 30.5% n/a 2.5%
2024 Q4 n/a 67.2% 2.5%
2025 Q2 31.0% n/a n/a
2025 Q3 31.7% n/a n/a
Top 1% share
31.7%
As of 2025 Q3
Top 10% share
67.2%
As of 2024 Q4
Bottom 50% share
2.5%
As of 2024 Q4
Top 1% vs 1928
+0.7 pts
Versus the pre-Depression peak of 31.0%

About this chart

Three series, one chart: the Top 1% (gold, solid), Top 10% (slate, long-dashed), and Bottom 50% (sienna, short-dashed) shares of total US household wealth. Together they describe how concentrated the wealth distribution has become since the first Gilded Age. The comparison below is against the series' own pre-Depression peak (1928), the highest concentration the first Gilded Age recorded in this data; the 2025 Q3 reading is the publication's running test of whether economic populism can end the Second Gilded Age.

Color choice

This chart's three lines are deliberately not partisan-coded. The gold line is the publication's signature color and tracks the Top 1%, its flagship metric; the Top 10% and Bottom 50% lines use neutral slate and sienna tones, not the red and blue this publication reserves for Republican and Democratic election data elsewhere on the site. A household's wealth share is not a party, and coloring it as one would say something the data does not.

Color is also not the only thing separating the three lines. In dark mode the gold and sienna tones sit close enough together that a reader with low vision, or one reading on a poorly calibrated screen, could not be expected to tell them apart by hue. So each series carries its own stroke pattern as well: the Top 1% solid, the Top 10% long-dashed, the Bottom 50% short-dashed. The legend draws the same patterns, the chart's description names them, and the data table below states every figure in text.

Method & sources

Pre-1989 figures are from Saez & Zucman and the World Inequality Database; 1989-present is from the Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts . Reconstruction notes for any divergence between sources are tracked in the per-series methodology page (forthcoming at /methodology/wealth-concentration).