The Federal Reserve’s newest release shows the wealthiest 1% of US households holding 32.5% of aggregate household net worth in the second quarter of 2026, while the bottom half held 2.3%. This article explains how those shares are produced, what moved in the past year, and why a share is a different thing from a standard of living. It describes United States data only; other countries measure and distribute wealth differently.
Where do these wealth shares come from?
The figures come from the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts, often shortened to DFA. According to the Federal Reserve, they provide quarterly estimates of the distribution of a comprehensive measure of US household wealth, with data starting in the third quarter of 1989. The Fed page was last updated on September 18, 2026.
The method matters. As the Federal Reserve describes it, the DFA combine two products: the Financial Accounts of the United States, which give aggregate household balance sheets every quarter, and the Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial survey of household microdata. The aggregate totals are therefore timely, while the split between richer and poorer households leans on a survey that is only run every three years. Between surveys, the distribution is an estimate rather than a count.
The Fed groups households into five bands: the top 0.1%, the next 0.9%, the next 9%, the next 40%, and the bottom half. The data can also be cut by income, age, generation, education and race.
What does net worth actually measure?
Net worth is what a household owns minus what it owes. Assets include bank deposits, retirement accounts, shares, business interests and housing; liabilities include mortgages, credit cards and student loans. It is a stock measured at a point in time, unlike income, which is a flow over a period. This is the distinction explored in what wealth really means beyond income.
Two households with identical salaries can sit in very different places. One may own a home and a diversified portfolio; the other may rent and carry debt. A measure based on net worth captures that difference in a way an income figure cannot.
What are the latest numbers?
According to Federal Reserve data published through FRED, the St. Louis Fed’s data service, as of the second quarter of 2026:
| Measure | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1% share of net worth | 31.1% | 32.5% |
| Top 1% net worth | $51.6 trillion | $60.3 trillion |
| Bottom 50% share of net worth | 2.4% | 2.3% |
| Bottom 50% net worth | $4.0 trillion | $4.3 trillion |
Dollar figures are rounded from series reported in millions of dollars: roughly $51,567 billion and $60,313 billion for the top 1%, and $3,997 billion and $4,278 billion for the bottom half.
The top 1% share moved through the year as follows: 31.1% in Q2 2025, 31.5% in Q3 2025, 31.8% in Q4 2025, 31.7% in Q1 2026 and 32.5% in Q2 2026. The bottom half’s share was 2.4% in each quarter from Q2 2025 to Q1 2026, then 2.3% in Q2 2026.
How much did each group gain in a year?
Both groups grew in dollar terms, but not equally. The illustrative arithmetic below uses the rounded series above.
- Top 1%: $60,313 billion minus $51,567 billion is a gain of about $8,746 billion, or roughly 17.0%.
- Bottom 50%: $4,278 billion minus $3,997 billion is a gain of about $281 billion, or roughly 7.0%.
The top 1%’s dollar gain was therefore about 31 times larger than the bottom half’s. Percentage growth tells a related story: a group holding a large proportion of equities and business assets benefits more when those prices rise, so its share can climb even while everyone else’s balance also grows.
As a cross-check, the implied total can be recovered from the shares: $60.3 trillion divided by 0.325 is about $185.6 trillion. The bottom half’s $4.28 trillion is about 2.3% of that, consistent with the published share.
Why can a share rise when nobody lost money?
A share is a ratio. If the top group’s wealth grows 17% and the bottom group’s grows 7%, the top group’s slice of the total grows even though the bottom group is richer in dollars than it was a year earlier.
The composition of assets drives much of this. Net worth that is concentrated in financial assets such as stocks tends to swing with markets, while net worth concentrated in a home moves more slowly. This article does not break down the asset mix by percentile, since the pages reviewed did not state it, but the general mechanism is why asset-price moves feed through to wealth shares quickly.
Quarterly changes of a few tenths of a point also deserve caution. The Q1 2026 reading for the top 1% dipped slightly from Q4 2025 (31.8% to 31.7%) before the larger Q2 jump, a reminder that single-quarter moves can be noisy.
How should the quarterly path be read?
Taken quarter by quarter, the top 1% share rose from 31.1% to 31.5%, then 31.8%, eased to 31.7%, and finished at 32.5%. Across the same five readings the bottom half’s share barely registered movement, staying at 2.4% before slipping to 2.3%. That contrast is informative: a group holding a small slice of a very large total can see its dollar balance grow in percentage terms and still watch its share stay flat or slip, because the total is driven mostly by the holdings of those at the top.
It also helps to separate level from direction. The level of a share describes how concentrated wealth is today. The direction, a rise of 1.4 percentage points in the top 1% share over four quarters (32.5 minus 31.1), describes what happened recently. Neither says anything about why, and neither should be extended into a forecast; they are simply the latest published estimates from the Federal Reserve.
What can’t a wealth share tell you?
Several limits apply to any reading of these data.
- Age and life stage. A young graduate with student debt and a retiree with a paid-off home can both appear near different points in the distribution for ordinary reasons. The bottom half includes many households that are early in their working lives.
- Mobility. A snapshot shows who holds wealth now, not whether households move between groups over time.
- Estimation error. Because the survey is triennial, interim quarters rely on modeling.
Are US figures comparable with the UK or Europe?
Not directly. Each country builds household balance sheets with its own surveys, definitions of assets, treatment of pensions and housing, and top-end coverage. A 32.5% top-1% share in the United States cannot be set beside a figure from a UK or euro area source unless the two use the same definitions. Readers in the UK or Europe should look to their own statistical offices and central banks, and treat cross-country league tables with care.
How can households use this information?
Distribution data is context, not a prescription. It is useful for understanding why headline asset-price rallies feel uneven, and why a household can see its own balance rise while its relative position slips. At the household level, the more actionable questions are about your own balance sheet: what you own, what you owe, how diversified your holdings are (see how diversification actually works), what fees you pay (see why investment fees matter), and whether your habits are steady (see why consistency matters more than big wins).
Reading wealth shares with the right expectations
The Fed’s data shows a US household wealth distribution in which the top 1% held 32.5% of net worth and the bottom half held 2.3% in the second quarter of 2026, with both groups richer in dollars than a year earlier but the top group gaining far more. The numbers are estimates built from aggregate accounts and a triennial survey, they measure holdings at a point in time rather than lifetime security, and they apply to the United States alone. Used with those caveats, they are a useful gauge of how asset-price moves are shared out.
This article is general information, not personalised financial advice. Rules, data and rates change.
Sources: Federal Reserve Board; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
