Household wealth trends in the United States, 1962 to 2013: What happened over the Great Recession?

EN Wolff - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the …, 2016 - rsfjournal.org
I look at wealth trends from 1962 to 2013, particularly for the middle class. Asset prices
plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. The most telling
finding is that median wealth plummeted by 44 percent between 2007 and 2010, almost
double the drop in housing prices. Wealth inequality, after almost two decades of little
movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. This sharp fall in median net worth and rise in
overall wealth inequality are traceable primarily to the high leverage of middle-class …