Poorest Americans See Record Increase in Wealth Since the Pandemic

(Bloomberg) -- After the crash of 2008, the bottom half of U.S. households saw their share of the country’s wealth plunge close to zero. This time, so far, it’s different.

Since the pandemic began last year, there’s been the biggest increase on record in the wealth share held by the poorest 50% of Americans, according to Federal Reserve data published Friday. It rose to 2.5% as of Sept. 30, from 1.8% at the end of 2019 -- after reaching a low of 0.3% a decade ago.

In dollar terms, that means the wealth held by the bottom half, some 65 million households, rose by $1.5 trillion in the pandemic to $3.4 trillion.

To be sure, the bottom half’s wealth share -- while it’s now the biggest since 2004 -- remains far below what was normal in the 1990s. It’s also just a sliver of the net worth held by the top 1%.

And the gains for the poorest Americans didn’t come at the expense of the richest. The top 1% enjoyed an even bigger jump in their portion, which rose by 1.3 percentage points. Those 1.3 million households now own almost $44 trillion in wealth, close to one-third of the national total, after adding more than $10 trillion in the pandemic. 

It was the groups below the 1%, but still in the top half of the distribution, who saw their wealth shares decline. 

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