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Article · 2026-10-11 · 8 min read · Household finance · World and macro

Families 75 and older are now the wealthiest, Fed survey finds

The Federal Reserve's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, released Friday 9 October, puts the median net worth of families headed by someone 75 or older at $504,900, up 37 percent from 2022 after inflation, while families under 35 are down 23 percent to $33,000; the typical family's net worth is up 2 percent to $215,900, stock ownership slipped from 58 to 56 percent of families, and the share of families behind on a loan payment went from 12.2 to 19.6 percent.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

SCHWadjacent BLKadjacent

The oldest families moved to the top

On Friday 9 October the Federal Reserve Board released the results of its 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, the survey of family balance sheets it has run every three years since 1989, with a summary report titled 'Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2022 to 2025'. The report counts 4,367 families interviewed for 2025, and states every dollar figure in 2025 dollars, so the changes it reports are after inflation. The typical family's net worth, what it owns minus what it owes, was up 2 percent from the 2022 survey to $215,900 at the median (the family in the middle), and the mean (the average, which very rich families pull up) was up 7 percent to $1,241,500, the report said. Median family income increased 7 percent to $82,200, while mean income was down 6 percent to $145,200. ^{[1, 2]}

The largest shift was by age. According to the report's table 2, families whose head is 75 or older had a median net worth of $504,900, against $367,300 in 2022, an increase of 37 percent, and a mean of $1,962,200, up 10 percent. That put them above every other age group: families aged 65 to 74, the richest by median in 2022 at $448,600, were down 4 percent to $431,300. The Fed wrote that 'families aged 75 or older had the largest net worth, exceeding levels by families that are nearly or recently retired', in contrast with the previous few surveys. Their median income was up 24 percent, from $53,800 to $66,800, the largest gain of any age group in table 1. ^{[2, 4]}

Families whose head is younger than 35 went the other way. The report said their median net worth decreased 23 percent to $33,000 and their mean decreased 33 percent to $135,400. By usual income (what a family earns in a normal year), the top tenth's median net worth increased 31 percent to $3,669,900, while the bottom fifth's was down 6 percent to $14,400; the Fed wrote that changes in wealth 'largely reinforced existing patterns of wealth inequality', with young families, renters and families without a high school diploma seeing declines. ^[2]

Stocks, retirement accounts and homes

The share of families holding any stock, directly or through funds and retirement accounts, slipped from 58 percent in 2022 to 56 percent in 2025, the Fed said, and among families that held stock the median holding increased 36 percent, from $56,900 to $77,400. Direct ownership of individual stocks was down from 21 percent of families to 19 percent, still well above the 15.2 percent of 2019, and the median direct holding went from $16,400 to $30,000. Ownership rose with income: 31 percent of families in the bottom half held stock, 77 percent of the upper-middle group and 97 percent of the top tenth, and the report said the bottom half 'accounted for nearly all of the overall decline in participation'. ^{[1, 2]}

Retirement accounts, the individual retirement accounts and employer plans such as 401(k)s, were held by 54.9 percent of families, up 0.6 percentage point, with the median balance among holders up 11 percent to $106,000 and the mean up 23 percent to $451,100, the report said. Stock held indirectly also sits in pooled investment funds, held by 11.1 percent of families, and other managed assets, held by 6.8 percent. Among families with an individual retirement account or a defined contribution plan, the average balance was higher in 2025 than in 2022 for every age group except the youngest, according to the report's box 2. ^[2]

The homeownership rate was 66 percent, about unchanged from 2022. For owners, the median net housing value, the home's value minus the mortgage and other debts against it, increased from $218,900 to $230,000. The report also said that the median home was worth more than 4.5 times the median family's income, and that the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage covering 80 percent of the median home, with property taxes, came to about 33 percent of the median family's monthly income, an all-time high for the survey, up from 26 percent in 2022. ^{[1, 2]}

Debt, and the reasons the Fed gives

About 77 percent of families carried some debt, about the same as 2022, and the median debt among them was about stable at $88,100, the report said. Payments took a bigger bite: the median ratio of debt payments to income was 15.4 percent, up 2.0 percentage points, and the share of families paying more than 40 percent of their income on debt went from 6.5 to 8.6 percent. The share of families that reported being behind on a loan payment in the preceding year went from 12.2 percent in 2022 to 19.6 percent, and 8.2 percent were 60 days late or more. Over the same three years, the report said, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate went from 4.2 to 6.7 percent and the average credit card rate from 14.6 to 21.4 percent. ^{[1, 2]}

The Fed gives its own reasons. For the oldest families, it wrote that 'the increase in net worth was primarily driven by an increase in the value of retirement accounts', while noting the survey also recorded a larger share of families over 75, 13.4 percent of all families in 2025. For the youngest, the declines 'are primarily driven by the unwinding of business equity gains between 2019 and 2022'. It said the value of stock holdings rose for every income group 'in line with the rise in public equity markets', that 'the strong stock market performance and increases in house values' boosted family assets, and that the higher payment burden 'may be related to the concurrent increase in interest rates for mortgages and consumer loans'. The report sets this against a backdrop of growth of around 2.5 percent a year, unemployment going from 3.7 to 4.2 percent and consumer prices rising 3.6 percent a year on average. ^[2]

The Associated Press led with the stock market, reporting that families 75 and older were 'bolstered by steady gains in the stock market', and that the rise in late payments was 'a sign of the toll that sharply higher inflation and higher interest rates have taken on lower-income Americans'. Reuters, in a report by Howard Schneider, said the survey showed income gains concentrated among the less well off but more wealth flowing to the top 10 percent. CBS MoneyWatch tied the gains to the run in the S&P 500, the index of 500 large US companies, over the period the survey covers, and noted the survey does not capture this year's price increases. ^{[3, 4, 5, 6]}

Where the reports differ

The press figures differ from the Fed's in places. The AP reported that the median net worth of 'the richest one-tenth of American families' increased 31 percent to $3.6 million; in the report the 31 percent increase, to $3,669,900 ($3.7 million rounded, by the desk's arithmetic), belongs to the top tenth by usual income, while the top tenth by net worth had a median of $4,935,200, up 19 percent. CBS reported the oldest families' median as $504,000 against the Fed's $504,900, and wrote that households headed by 65 to 74 year olds saw wealth increase 37 percent, while the Fed's table shows that group down 4 percent at the median and the 37 percent increase belonging to families 75 and older. ^{[2, 3, 5]}

Reuters reported a sample of around 4,300 households polled largely from April through May of 2025; the Fed's report says 4,367 families were interviewed, mostly between April and December, with about one-seventh of interviews held from January to May 2026. The Fed's own wording also varies: its release says the 8.6 percent share of families with payments above 40 percent of income was 'a level last seen in the 2013 survey', while the report's body calls it 'the largest share since 2010'; and on late payments its summary says 'since the 2010 survey' while its body says 'in any of the past four surveys, or since 2016'. ^{[1, 2, 6]}

What settles it next

The Fed's next quarterly Financial Accounts of the United States, the Z.1 release that tracks household net worth in total across the economy, is due Thursday 10 December 2026 at noon, the Board's release page said. The survey itself runs every three years, so the next one, by the desk's arithmetic, is the 2028 survey; the report also notes that the Board publishes the underlying data and tables for anyone to recompute its figures. ^{[1, 2, 7]}

Who it reaches

Charles Schwab (SCHW) is adjacent: the survey counts the brokerage and retirement accounts American families hold, and Schwab's annual report for 2025 says it had 38.5 million active brokerage accounts, 5.7 million workplace plan participant accounts and $11.90 trillion in client assets at 31 December 2025. ^{[2, 8]}

BlackRock (BLK) is adjacent: the survey counts stock held indirectly through pooled funds and retirement plans, and BlackRock's annual report for 2025 says it managed $14.0 trillion at 31 December 2025, with $5.5 trillion in iShares exchange-traded funds and a $600 billion LifePath target date franchise built for retirement savers. ^{[2, 9]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

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