Median net worth by age
Age ………….2010…………. …….2013 …………………..change
35-44 ……$45,200 ………… $46,700 ……………….up 3 percent
45-54 ……..$126,300…….. $105,300 ……………down 17 percent
55-64 ……..$192,300 ……..$165,900 …………….down 14 percent
65-74 …….. $221,500 ……..$232,100 …………….. up 5 percent
>75…………. $232,300 …….$194,800 ……………down 16 percent
Source: Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances
Maybe it’s depressing, maybe it’s comforting in a sort of depressing way: the numbers confirm that typical American families took a beating during the three years after the official end of the Great Recession.
Adjusted for inflation, media family incomes and net worth both declined, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve, released this week.
“The data now affirm what most Americans have been feeling since the recession ended — that their own recovery is not yet complete,” wrote a trio of writers at the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability.
— Median family income went from $49,022 to $46,668 – down 5 percent, the Fed determined.
— Median net worth slipped from $82,521 to $81,400 – down 1.4 percent.
Keep in mind, the Fed notes, that the economy was getting better in that period: gross domestic product expanded at a 2.1 percent-a-year pace and the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 7.5 percent.
And the losses were worth in the three years before. And they were worse still for what the Fed calls “several economically vulnerable groups.”
Go back to 2007 and the drop in median family income was 12.1 percent. During the same period, net worth plunged 40.1 percent.
“The financial impact of the Great Recession was so severe that all the gains achieved during the 1990s and 2000s were wiped out,” according to a trio of writers at the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability.
Compared to 1989 levels, median family income slipped 1 percent and media net worth 4.3 percent.
Some groups were hurt more and recovered slower.
In 2007, median income of families headed by an African-American or Latino was 70 percent of the overall median. By 2013, median income of those African-American or Latino families was just 67 percent of the overall median.
A similar drop hit families headed by someone without a high-school degree – and they started lower. Their median income was 51 percent of the overall median and it fell to 48 percent.
One contradiction: the economy has been growing since mid-2009 and so has average family income. The numbers, however, indicate that a larger share was going to families at the upper end of the income and wealth ladder.
Between 2010 and 2013, average family income rose 4 percent, adjusted for inflation.
The Fed study is, of course, not the first look at family income and wealth over the past few years, but it is one of the deepest. One problem is the time lag – what has happened since 2013?
This study doesn’t say, but Sentier Research has done its own calculations based on Census Bureau data.
As reported by demographer Cheryl Russell, Sentier concludes that median household income in July was up 1.7 percent from a year earlier.
That study has median income still 2.9 percent below the mid-2009 level, 4.6 percent below 2007 and 5.7 percent below 2000, wrote Russell on her blog, Demo Memo.
In other words, it hasn’t been a good time for most families. But at least, however tentatively, the trend line has turned positive.
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