Household wealth distribution in the U.S. Q1 2026 by wealth percentile

In the first quarter of 2026, some ********** of the total household wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of wealth. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only held just *** percent of the total wealth in the country.

Income inequality in the U.S.

Despite the idea that the United States is a country where hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will inevitably lead to success, this is often not the case. In 2024, *** percent of U.S. households had an annual income under 15,000 U.S. dollars. With such a small percentage of people in the United States owning such a vast majority of the country’s wealth, the gap between the rich and poor in America remains stark.

The top one percent

The United States was the one of the countries with the most billionaires worldwide. Elon Musk, with a net worth of some  *** billion U.S. dollars, was the richest people in the United States. Over the past 50 years, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio has exploded, causing the gap between rich and poor to grow, with some economists theorizing that this gap is the largest it has been since right before the Great Depression.