U.S. home price gains lift household wealth to $90.2 trillion

WASHINGTON—A healthy increase in home values and higher stock prices drove up U.S. household wealth in the July-September quarter, though the gains are largely concentrated among wealthier Americans. The Federal Reserve said Thursday that real estate values increased $554 billion in the third quarter, while Americans’ stock and mutual fund portfolios rose $494 billion. Total household wealth, which includes checking and savings accounts and subtracts mortgages and other debt, increased 1.8 percent to $90.2 trillion.

The rise suggests that Americans’ finances are improving, with more families building equity in their homes. Greater wealth can encourage more spending and boost economic growth. Stock prices have soared to new record levels since the election, which means household net worth is likely higher now.

Still, national wealth isn’t widely shared, which limits the benefits of any increase. The wealthiest 1 percent held 42 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2012, the latest data available, according to research published earlier this year by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California-Berkeley.

The rise in the wealth gap mirrors the widening of income inequality in the past several decades. The top 0.1 percent of Americans, which consists of about 160,000 taxpayers worth more than $20 million, owned 22 percent of national wealth in 2012, up from just 7 percent in 1978, Saez’s research found. According to a paper released earlier this week by Saez, Zucman and Thomas Piketty, the richest 1 percent of Americans derive more than half their income from capital assets such as homes, stocks and bonds, as well as their share of pension savings.

The bottom 90 percent of Americans earn less than 20 percent of their income from capital, most of that in the form of pension fund savings.

U.S. household wealth fell sharply in the Great Recession as home prices and financial markets plummeted, wiping out more than $11 trillion in asset values. Net worth fell to $56 trillion in 2008.

Since then, stock prices have reached record levels, a boon to