Friday, August 22, 2014
Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011
Census Bureau, Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011:
Median household net worth decreased by $5,046, or 6.8 percent, between 2000 and 2011. ... Between 2000 and 2011, experiences of households varied widely depending on their net worth quintile (See Figure 1). Median household net worth decreased by $5,124 for households in the first (bottom) net worth quintile, $7,056 (or 49.3 percent) for the second quintile, and $5,072 (or 6.9 percent) for the third quintile. Median household net worth increased by $18,433 (or 9.8 percent) for households in the fourth quintile, and by $61,379 (or 10.8 percent) for households in the highest (top) quintile.
(Hat Tip: Bruce Bartlett.)
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/08/distribution-of-household-wealth-.html
Defining assets is hard and this is not how a family court defines assets. There a law degree and bar card equal human capital of some amount, but here it only shows up on the liability side (student loan). Also, don't your contributions to Social Security and Medicare create a retirement asset? What about Section 197 assets like good will, know-how, customer lists (e.g., Hilary Clinton famously commands $500,000 per speech and no one claimes it's because of the canned words and everyone knows it's because she has goodwill of the powerful, a rolodex and know how to deliver).
Defining wealth accurately is impossible, like defining "accession to wealth".
Posted by: YoGabbaGabba | Aug 22, 2014 9:30:16 AM