Wealth Growth

Wealth growth for young Americans was stagnant for decades until the Biden Administration. Suddenly a historic rise developed.

In Axios, Emily Peck reported that household wealth for Americans under 40 has risen an astonishing 49% from where it was before the pandemic.

Wealth doubled for those born between 1981 and 1996. Wealth overall has soared in the U.S. since the pandemic, in part because of increasing home and stock prices. U.S. homeowners are sitting on a record mountain of wealth. 48 million Americans have access to tappable equity, with an average of $206,000 per mortgage holder.

This increase in household wealth comes in part from rising home prices and more financial assets, as well as less debt, which fell by $5,000 per household. That wealth effect is likely helping to keep consumer spending numbers healthy.

Households of those under 35 have shown a 140% increase in median wealth in the same time period.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have fueled “a historic boom in rebuilding our roads and bridges, developing and deploying clean energy, [and] revitalizing American manufacturing,” Biden said. That investment has attracted $866 billion in private-sector investment across the country, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs “building new semiconductor factories, electric vehicles and battery factories…here in America.”