There are many interesting articles about how wealth is distributed in America. It’s funny because no one ever can guess with any accuracy at all at how wealth is distributed amongst age groups, percentiles, genders/ethnicities, etc. In fact they have asked people to visualize with pie and what not how a person thinks wealth is distributed and the person is usually WAYYYYYY the fuck off. It’s scary.
The article in Visual Capitalist is just about America’s wealth distribution by generation. I thought I would just put this information in a table to show the data. This data is of course as of 2024/2025 and always collected by reputable sources.
Generation
Birth Years
Number Of People
% Of Population
Value Of Assets
Share Of Assets
Average $ Per Person
Silent
> 1946
~15,236,972
4.48%
$20.1T
12.3%
$1,319,159
Boomers
1946-1964
~66,899,831
19.67%
$83.3T
51.0%
$1,245,145
Gen X
1965-1980
~65,539,387
19.27%
$42.6T
26.1%
$649,990
Millennials & Gen Z
1981-2012
~144,955,303
42.62%
$17.1T
10.5%
$117,967
Totals
293,005,616
86.15%
$163.1T
I had to do some calculations to get out the Gen Alpha since they are not the age to have assets yet and are not in the Visualizing America’s Wealth By Generation article.
I also love to point out that BOTH Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are baby boomers.
Everybody thinks the US is a first world country. However some things in this country make it less than great. I think that America isn’t really a first world, but somewhere between second and first. We show a lot of the same behavior or characteristics of a country that isn’t first class. Here are some examples:
Healthcare
We’re way behind a lot of other countries who are not first world; like Cuba. The Affordable Care Act did great things but we’re not there yet. Every citizen isn’t guaranteed healthcare yet. Our life expectancy (#51) and infant mortality rates (#50) are still higher than a lot of other countries. Even some which we consider worse.
Women In Power
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the US is 80th in the world in women in parliaments. There are only 20 senators who are women and 79 (or 18%) are in the house of representatives. We still haven’t had a female vice president or president. Even the Philippines has had a women president.
Incarceration Rate
We’re number one in prisoners per capita at 716 per 100,000 population; behind Russia at 490 per 100,000 population. We blow Mexico out of the water. They only have 209 per 100,000 population. We’re less than 5% of the population yet we have almost 25% of the prison population of the world. First world countries start around 100 on the list, but we’re number one in incarceration rate.
Birth Rate
We still have a lot of kids in this country which isn’t like a first world country. And it’s really funny too. Other countries have a lot of incentives for their citizens to have kids, but not in the US. We don’t even get paid maternity leave. The only thing guaranteed for us is under Clinton’s FMLA; and that’s unpaid.
We’re not doing well here either. We’re worse than countries like Egypt, Niger, Iraq, Iran. Even India and Ethiopia have better income equality than we do. Our gini coefficient is at 40.8.