Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

From today’s NYT “Business Day” by Floyd Norris:

THE net worth of American households is now 20 percent higher than it was before it began to decline in 2007, the Federal Reserve reported this week. It said the households together were worth $81.5 trillion at the end of the second quarter, higher than ever and up 10 percent from a year earlier.

By another measure, household net worth is a little short of the record highs reached before the recession. It amounted to 471 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in the second quarter, just short of the record 473 percent set in early 2007.

Those figures are not adjusted for inflation. But adjusted for the change in the Consumer Price Index, household wealth is also at a record high, 4 percent above the 2007 level.

The recovery in household wealth has come in ways that favor the wealthiest households. The Fed estimated that real estate owned by households is worth $22.9 trillion, 6 percent less than seven years earlier but 27 percent more than at the bottom of the real estate market in 2011.

Read the entire article here.

By Editor