The numbers are so far apart that they describe two very different American economies.
Under the current Trump administration, the wealthiest 0.1% gained 8,000 times as much wealth per household as the bottom half of Americans.
According to new findings from the Center for American Progress, which used Federal Reserve data, from the end of 2024 through the first quarter of 2026, households in the wealthiest 0.1% gained an average of $9.6 million in inflation-adjusted wealth. For households in the bottom half of the country, the average gain was $1,200.
That works out to more than 8,000 times as much wealth flowing to a household at the very top as to one among the roughly 68 million households in the bottom half.
“The gains of the past year and a half have been overwhelmingly concentrated among the wealthiest Americans, while millions of families are still struggling with high levels of debt,” said Cristina Tello-Trillo, chief economist at the Center for American Progress and a co-author of the analysis.
Households in the top 1% gained an average of $1.8 million over the same period, the analysis found.
The Fed’s Distributional Financial Accounts measure how U.S. household wealth is divided among groups, including the top 1%, the next 9%, the next 40% and the bottom 50%. The accounts track assets and liabilities and have measured household wealth distribution quarterly since 1989.
CAP’s analysis found that the people who began this period with the most wealth were also positioned to capture the biggest gains because of what they own.
About 71% of the assets of the wealthiest 0.1% were held in corporate stocks and private businesses during the first quarter of 2026. From the fourth quarter of 2024 through the first quarter of this year, their inflation-adjusted wealth from stocks and private businesses increased by $1.35 trillion, or approximately $9.9 million per household.
The bottom half of households hold 47% of their assets in real estate and another 20% in consumer durables, including cars and household appliances. Those nearly 68 million households collectively own only about 5% of the nation’s aggregate assets, according to CAP. The top 10% own about two-thirds.
Analysts said that difference is crucial to understanding how a rising stock market can produce enormous gains in national wealth without delivering anything close to equal gains across American households.
Federal Reserve figures released in September show just how much money is tied to equities. Household and nonprofit holdings of corporate equities reached $74 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, up from $55.2 trillion in 2024. Total household and nonprofit assets stood at $217.8 trillion. The Fed’s broader figures are not broken down in the same way as CAP’s household calculations, but they show the enormous role equities play in American wealth.
The CAP also found that households between the 50th and 90th wealth percentiles carried $8.8 trillion in aggregate debt during the first quarter of 2026 after adjusting for inflation, roughly the level they carried during the Great Recession. Households between the 90th and 99th percentiles carried $4.1 trillion, also near Great Recession-era levels.
Debt among the bottom half has not returned to its Great Recession peak, according to the analysis, but remains substantially higher than during the early and middle 2000s.
“This gap was never about income,” Mary, a social media user, wrote about the wealth disparities in the U.S. on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The bottom half holds wages and cash, which grow in a straight line. The top holds assets that compound and debt they never repay, only borrow against. One side is paid for its time. The other gets paid while it sleeps.”
CAP also points to policy choices by President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress as contributors to the widening divide, particularly tax provisions benefiting wealthy business owners. The organization warns that administration efforts to open ordinary Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts to a broader range of alternative investments could expose retirement savings to additional risk.
The administration and congressional Republicans have argued that their tax policies encourage investment, business expansion and economic growth. However, analysts at the CAP reached a sharply different conclusion, contending that the structure of the tax changes favors households already holding the assets most likely to generate substantial wealth.
The Federal Reserve’s latest national balance sheet shows that Americans collectively became much wealthier during the second quarter of 2026. Household and nonprofit net worth climbed to $195.2 trillion, propelled heavily by a $10.7 trillion increase tied to direct and indirect corporate equity holdings.
However, researchers said millions of dollars in additional wealth for households at the highest reaches of the economy, compared with an average gain for the bottom half that would not cover several months of rent in many American cities.
“Stock market benefits are not being shared equally, and the tax code has been flipped upside down to provide giveaways to wealthy business owners,” Tello-Trillo said. “The wealth gap is growing, making it harder for families in the middle and at the bottom to build lasting financial security.”
