The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances shows a sharper split in wealth by age: households headed by someone 75 or older saw median net worth rise about 38% between 2022 and 2025, while households headed by someone under 35 saw theirs fall 23%.
That left the oldest households with a median net worth of $504,600 in 2025 dollars, up from $366,288 in 2022. The youngest households finished at $32,820, down from $42,725 three years earlier, which means the oldest group now holds roughly 15 times the wealth of the youngest.
The numbers matter now because the Fed’s survey is the gold standard for measuring household wealth and is released only every three years. Across all families, median net worth rose just 2% to $215,900, so the age divide was not the result of a broad-based jump. It was concentrated at the top and bottom of the age range.
Nick Maggiulli said no other age bracket recorded a change in median net worth larger than 6% in either direction, a sign that the latest results were unusually one-sided. The 75-and-older bracket in 2025 also included households headed by people born in 1950 or earlier, while the under-35 group mixes Gen Z with younger millennials.
That matters because the oldest cohort is not a pure boomer bloc, and the survey does not follow the same households over time. These are group snapshots, not a household-by-household movie. Even so, the broader pattern is hard to miss: Americans 55 and over now hold roughly $140 trillion, about three-quarters of the nation’s net worth, and the gains are clustering where people are least likely to be starting out.
Samuel Moyn said the latest Fed figures further prove his thesis of an “oldigarchy,” arguing that older, disproportionately wealthy Americans hold outsized influence. He said the question is whether the age correlation of the haves and have-nots, older versus younger, is fair, and answered, “And it isn’t.” In his view, this is not just the rich getting richer. It is the older getting richer, with power and assets being reserved for later life.
The unresolved question is what is driving the gap so sharply in this three-year window. The Fed’s numbers show the divide, but not the mechanism behind it. For now, the clearest reading is that wealth is rising fastest where it is already most concentrated, and the youngest households are moving in the opposite direction.
