For most families, wealth has vanished
By Rick Newman June 24, 2014 3:16 PM Daily Ticker

If you’re a typical family, you’re considerably poorer than you used to be. No wonder the “recovery” feels like a recession.

A new study published by the Russell Sage foundation helps explain why many families feel like they’re falling behind: They actually are. The study, which measures the average wealth of U.S. households by income level, reveals a startling decline in wealth nationwide. The median household in 2013 had a net worth of just $56,335 -- 43% lower than the median wealth level right before the recession began in 2007, and 36% lower than a decade ago. “There are very few signs of significant recovery from the losses in wealth suffered by American families during the Great Recession,” the study concludes.

Not surprisingly, lower-income households have lost a larger portion of their wealth than those with higher incomes, as the following chart from the study shows:


Wealth generally comes from two types of assets: financial holdings and real estate. Financial assets have more than recovered ground lost during the recession, thanks largely to a stock-market rally now in its sixth year. The S&P 500 index, for instance, has hit several new record highs this year and is up more than 25% from the peak it reached in 2007. Home values, however, are still about 18% below the peak reached in 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index.

Since wealthier households tend to hold more financial assets, they’ve benefited the most form the stock-market recovery, which itself has been assisted by the Federal Reserve’s super-easy monetary policy. Fed policy has been intended to help typical homeowners and buyers too, by pushing long-term interest rates unusually low and, in theory, goosing demand for housing. But a housing recovery is taking much longer to play out than the reflation of financial assets. That’s part of the reason the top 10% of households have held onto more of their wealth than the other 90% during the past 10 years. Here’s how different income groups have fared since 2003:



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