Between the Federal Reserve’s 2022 and 2025 surveys, the typical US family’s household wealth rose 2 per cent. The average family’s rose 7 per cent.
Both figures are correct. They answer different questions, and the distance between them is where the story of the survey sits.
Two ways to describe a family
The Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, published 9 October 2026, asks families what they own and owe. The Fed reports two summaries of the answers. The median is the family in the middle: half have less, half have more. The mean is the total divided by the number of families.
In the survey’s 2025 results, median household wealth was $215,900, up 2 per cent after adjusting for inflation. Mean household wealth was $1,241,500, up 7 per cent.
The Fed notes why the two can part ways. When data include very large values for a small part of the population, as with income and household wealth, the median is less sensitive to those values than the mean. The mean, in turn, gives every family the same weight, which makes it useful for comparing groups.
A handful of very large fortunes can lift the average while leaving the family in the middle almost where it was. The survey is built to capture families with extremely high wealth, so it sees those fortunes.
Income shows the same effect in reverse. Between the two surveys, median family income rose 7 per cent, while mean income fell 6 per cent. The Fed attributes the fall in the mean to a decline among families at the top of the income distribution. Leave out the top 1 per cent of income, it says, and mean income declined only 1 per cent. The typical family’s pay cheque did better than the average suggested, because the average was pulled down from the top.
Destination of the gains
The Fed sorted families by usual income, meaning their normal earnings rather than a single year’s. The pattern was uneven.
Families in the bottom fifth saw median household wealth fall 6 per cent, to $14,400. Their mean fell 4 per cent. Families between the 40th and 80th percentiles of usual income saw median and mean household wealth grow 5 per cent to 15 per cent.
At the top, families in the highest tenth of usual income saw median household wealth rise 31 per cent, to $3,669,900. Their mean rose 6 per cent.
Set side by side, the two ends of the income scale moved in opposite directions. The poorest fifth lost ground. The richest tenth gained.
The top tenth by income runs against the usual order. Its median rose by far more than its mean, so the gain was not a few giant fortunes lifting an average. The family in the middle of that group got richer too.
The same ladder, drawn by household wealth instead of income, shows the same split. Families between the 75th and 90th percentiles saw substantial gains in both median and mean. In the top tenth by household wealth, median household wealth rose 19 per cent to $4,935,200. In the bottom quarter, the mean was negative in both surveys: owing more than they owned, on average.
The Fed also noted what made this survey different. In 2019 to 2022, household wealth grew broadly across the distribution. This time it did not.
The household behind the numbers
Household wealth is what a family owns minus what it owes, so a small change in the middle of the chart can mean something concrete: a savings cushion, a car paid off, equity in a house.
The survey’s housing split shows how far apart those cushions can be. Homeowners’ median household wealth rose 6 per cent to $458,900. For renters and other non-homeowners it fell 7 per cent to $10,600.
The lowest rung of the wealth ladder was thinner still. Among families in the bottom quarter by household wealth, the median fell from $3,800 in 2022 to $1,700 in 2025. For those families, a car repair or a medical bill is a larger share of everything they have.
One more tally of the same question
Felix Nikolas Prehn examines the distribution of household wealth and asset ownership in his research. Those are the questions the survey puts in figures.
His paper, posted on Zenodo, addresses a related question with different data. The survey groups families by usual income. “The Hidden Regressive Tax” instead sorts households by wealth, using the Fed’s quarterly accounts of who holds what. Prehn finds that from the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2026, the bottom half of households by wealth captured 2.8 per cent of an $83.9 trillion rise in US household wealth.
The two sources use different groups and different periods, so their numbers are not interchangeable. Both sources ask the same question: which families gain when asset prices rise.
Between 2022 and 2025, the survey shows a typical family whose position barely changed and an average lifted by gains at the top. The average does not describe the position of renters or families near zero household wealth.
About Felix Nikolas Prehn
Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker, born in Germany. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. He is also a painter and sculptor and a public advocate for animal rescue.
About The Prehn Institute
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.
