New Data: Median and Average Net Worth

[james.hendrickson]

All - the most representative study of American wealth is the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCR).

They use a bunch of heavy duty survey methods to select 4,000 (ish) people every three years and interview them about their wealth. The survey specifically excludes super-billionaires, so its basically a solid picture of what real wealth in America looks like, at least in the statistical aggregate.

The results for 2022 are published.

Basically the median family net worth is $192,700 and the average net worth is $1,059,470.












Source: Survey of Consumer Finances.

So basically, if you are looking to evaluate how well you're doing with your own wealth building, these figures will tell you how the country is doing as a whole.

[ua_guy]

Let's see if we can unpack this here on the forum. I think it's important to call out that this isn't "new" data, it was published in late 2023 for the 2022 survey year. The next survey will be completed in 2025. It's an interesting survey nonetheless...

That's quite a spread between median and mean. $192,700- $1,059,500. I think that describes most of the people in the sample had lower family net worths, and a few families had extremely high net worths, which pulled the mean up way higher than the median. I think that is representative of our country as a whole, a very small percentage of super wealthy individuals skew statistics that would otherwise represent the 99%.

Thoughts?

[disneysteve]

Let's see if we can unpack this here on the forum. I think it's important to call out that this isn't "new" data, it was published in late 2023 for the 2022 survey year. The next survey will be completed in 2025. It's an interesting survey nonetheless...

That's quite a spread between median and mean. $192,700- $1,059,500. I think that describes most of the people in the sample had lower family net worths, and a few families had extremely high net worths, which pulled the mean up way higher than the median. I think that is representative of our country as a whole, a very small percentage of super wealthy individuals skew statistics that would otherwise represent the 99%.

Thoughts?

That's why it's so important to know the difference between average (mean) and median. Way too many places report averages when what they really should be reporting is medians which are way more informative. All it takes is a handful of very high numbers to skew an average but that wouldn't significantly change the median in the sample group regardless of the topic at hand.

[james.hendrickson]

That's why it's so important to know the difference between average (mean) and median. Way too many places report averages when what they really should be reporting is medians which are way more informative. All it takes is a handful of very high numbers to skew an average but that wouldn't significantly change the median in the sample group regardless of the topic at hand.

This is entirely correct Disneysteve. The main point of the post was so that people could benchmark their own wealth building to how the country is doing as a whole.

The one thing I would point out about the data is they exclude members of the Forbes 400 on purpose. BUT, you still have all the deca-millionaires which skew the data.

[myrdale]

Also this is across all families. It is hard to compare yourself with out taking age into account. Folks in their mid 20's compared to those in their mid 50's or 80's are going to be very different over all.

[disneysteve]

Also this is across all families. It is hard to compare yourself with out taking age into account. Folks in their mid 20's compared to those in their mid 50's or 80's are going to be very different over all.

Yep. Most of these national surveys are useless for comparison purposes. You also need to factor in income, family size, location, and other factors.

[myrdale]

It's still interesting information though.