America's wealth distribution by generation

Image source from X

If you want to know the wealth distribution in America by generation which I have to say is pretty obvious with the boomers have the majority of it then this blog is for you.

The Boomers are holding roughly$83.3 trillion in America. Over half of it. UBS reaffirmed it with their recent 2025 data, but let's be real, at this point these statistics don’t surprise anyone. We’ve been living it in real time for years now. I'm not American but it's pretty much the same all over the world.

The Boomers bought houses when they were very cheap. This is the part we always come back to. Buying a house in the 70s and early 80s was normal. It was ot something extravagant. It’s what you did when you got a good job. Except the house cost 5 to 10 times more a few decades later. Combined with the stock market basically doing its historic job since Reagan took office and a few decades of 401k plans compounding in the background and you have all this money that really didn’t require genius. Just good luck for them and perfect timing.

Gen X holds $42.6 trillion. That’s a lot of money too except Gen X is in their prime earning years. They didn’t get the super cheap houses but they’ve been around long enough to have something. The Silent Gen holds $20.1 trillion. Their wealth is declining as they use it to pay medical bills or pass it on.

Then there’s the Millennials and Gen Z which I'm part of but in America the group hold about $17.1 trillion combined. The biggest cohort, the smallest wealth. I don’t know how to describe it any nicer without misrepresenting it. They entered the workforce during or around the 2008 financial crisis. They have higher student loan debt than previous generations. And housing prices aren’t even tethered to income anymore.

My cousin bought a 2 bedroom apartment in Accra, Ghana last year. The down payment alone was more than her parent’s entire house price in the 90s.

This Great Wealth Transfer over the next two decades will supposedly balance this out as Boomers begin to pass the money down perhaps. Perhaps it all goes to medical expenses and paying off debt instead. I’m still deciding whether the Great Wealth Transfer narrative is reassuring or just another way to kick the can down the road for the underlying structural issues of our time.

This is net worth so remember that debt is factored in. It's not just income levels but stored wealth.