How Household Wealth Might Surprise Us

Ever more perplexing, many remain dissatisfied with the economy although numbers from the Federal Reserve say that wealth for individuals aged 18-39 has soared by an unprecedented amount. Yes, we recently looked at the reasons for the contradiction. But still, the size of today’s numbers make the inconsistency even more glaring.

Individuals’ Wealth

Composed of assets that include money, stocks, and property (minus debt), our wealth is a total that we have accumulated during a lifetime or more (if it includes inheritance).

For individuals, wealth increased the most from Q1 2019 to Q3 2023 for people 39 and under, Also up for other cohorts, the increase was 10 percent for 40-54 year-olds, and 30 percent for the 55 and older group:

As for the reason, it was financial assets. Millennials and Gen Z, more than their older generational cohorts, shifted into equities and mutual funds:

Household Wealth

Moving from individuals to households, predictably, the numbers are similar. In Q4 of 2023, at $259,000, the average wealth of households under 40 was up 49 percent from Q4 2019. Looking more closely, researchers hypothesize that, at $85,000, the average increase was widespread. All up, housing, liquid assets, small business ownership, financial assets, cars and other consumer durables, boosted younger households’ wealth. Meanwhile, their non-housing debt was down.

Most impressive, though, millennials’ (born 1981-1996) wealth soared:

You can see that financial assets gave younger households the biggest boost:

Our Bottom Line: Opinions of Economic Conditions

According to Pew Research, a year ago, just 19 percent of us said the economy was excellent or good, Now that number has ascended to 28 percent. At the other extreme, 31 percent see a poor economy and 41 percent said, “only fair.”

The negative opinions were topped by inflation related reasons. Meanwhile, the good to excellent people based their opinions on low unemployment, disinflation, wage growth, and the stock market:

So, returning to our title, the surprise could be how well the under 39’ers are faring.

My sources and more: Thanks to my Axios Markets newsletter for telling me that household wealth is up. Next, I found more detail from the NY Fed, Business Insider, and this article from the Center for American Progress. Then, for the consumer, we looked at this comparison. and at Pew’s data.