Surging stocks lift U.S. wealth

Surging stock prices and steady increases in home values powered American household wealth to $96.9 trillion this fall, though the gains aren’t widely shared.

The Federal Reserve said Thursday that U.S. net worth rose $1.7 trillion in the JulySeptember quarter, extending a steady upward march in American wealth after the Great Recession eliminated about one-sixth of it in 2008.

The value of Americans’ stock portfolios rose $1.1 trillion, and real estate values climbed $400 billion. Total household wealth includes checking and savings accounts and subtracts mortgages and other debt.

U.S. wealth has made a remarkable comeback since the recession, when it plummeted more than $10 trillion to $56.2 trillion. The figures aren’t adjusted for inflation or population growth, nor is it broken out by income levels.

But Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University, uses other Fed data to calculate figures for average and median households. The median is the point where half of households are richer, and half poorer, and gives a better sense of how typical families have fared.

In 2016, the latest figures available, median household wealth was still 34 per cent below its pre-recession, 2007 level. Average household wealth, meanwhile, fully recovered from the downturn and was 7 per cent higher last year.