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The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less
NYTimes ^ | By ANNA BERNASEK | JULY 26, 2014

Posted on 07/26/2014 9:42:47 AM PDT by quesney

Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially.

The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile. (For households at that level, 94 percent of the population had less wealth and 4 percent had more.) It found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth increased 14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth for the richest 1 percent of households.

For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even earlier.

“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News
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To: SamAdams76
Prices also rose in every region of the U.S. in May, with the West seeing the largest gain. The Northeast median price rose to $256,700, up from April’s $244,600, although compared with the year before the price was down 0.9 percent.

In the Midwest the median price increased to $165,900, up from $155,900, and prices were up 4.0 percent from the previous year.

The South’s median price rose to $184,800 in May, an increase from $174,500 in April. Prices there are up 4.4 percent on a yearly basis.

In the West, the median price jumped to $297,500 from $289,600, with an 8.4 percent increase from a year earlier. Tight inventory in the West remains the driving factor in rising prices.

Source http://www.realestateabc.com/outlook/overall.htm

41 posted on 07/26/2014 9:51:50 PM PDT by jpsb (Believe nothing until it has been officially denied)
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