Over-75 households now lead every US age group in median net worth, Fed survey finds

For a business deciding where to aim its prices, the Fed's age ranking is a trade between how much each customer holds and how many customers there are. Households headed by someone 75 or older are about 13.4% of the nation's families, the smallest age group ^[13]. Households headed by someone under 35 are about one in five, the largest ^[14]. The young outnumber the old by roughly 1.5 to one ^[22]. The typical old household holds about 15 times the net worth of the typical young one ^[21].

The survey is a balance sheet. It measures wealth, income and liabilities, with every figure adjusted for inflation ^[3]. Spending is not on that list, so the data cannot say how much of the older cohort's gain will reach a checkout. The Fed said the oldest households likely benefited from growth in their retirement assets ^[12], over a period in which the S&P 500 gained about 78% ^[4]. Households headed by 65- to 74-year-olds gained too, with wealth up 37% ^[19]. The age band is uneven. Nearly 10% of Americans 65 and older lived below the poverty line in 2025, up from roughly 9% a decade earlier, according to Census Bureau data cited by CBS News ^[16].

A skeptic would call this old news: a long bull market made people who own stocks richer. The rest of the survey is less tidy. Incomes rose broadly even after inflation, slightly reducing income inequality, according to the wire report carried by ABC News ^[18]. Debt stress rose anyway. The share of households behind on payments was roughly 13% in 2022 ^[20], and the same report called the jump a sign of the toll higher inflation has taken on lower-income Americans ^[24].

The workforce signal is narrower than the decline for young households suggests. The Fed attributed the under-35 drop chiefly to a fall in business equity gains ^[7]. An employer weighing cash pay against deferred pay for younger staff would, in my view, learn more from the debt figures than from that wealth decline. The Fed said of the 2025 data: "Families were more likely to be behind on their financial obligations than at any point since the 2010 survey." ^[9]

This quarter's pricing decision will run on dated evidence for a long time. The survey is conducted every three years ^[10], so the next comparable reading will cover 2028 ^[23]. CBS reported that the 2025 data do not capture this year's inflation from soaring energy costs ^[17]. A plan that moves price points toward older households now rests on balance sheets the Fed tied to retirement assets ^[12]. I'd expect demand from that cohort next year to move with the stock market that produced those gains ^[4].