Median Net Worth Peaks at 75+ in the Fed's Survey, but the Lead Is Thin

The typical interview for the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances runs about 120 minutes, and most of the 2025 interviews were done by telephone. An interviewer walks a household through every account, loan and property it owns. In all, 4,367 families finished one, and the Fed weights their answers to stand in for 135.0 million.

On Friday, Oct. 9, the Federal Reserve Board released the results, along with a summary report titled "Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2022 to 2025." Headlines quickly turned medians into rankings: the "wealthiest age group," the "richest" households, the poorest who "lost 56%." (Every dollar comparison below is in the Fed's inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars.)

The Fed did put families aged 75 and older on top, at a median net worth of $504,900. But that lead over families aged 65 to 74 is smaller than the survey's own margin of error, and the "56% loss" for the poorest is $2,100. The survey is a better lesson in how to read a median than a leaderboard of who is richest.

The median is the midpoint family: half have less, half have more. The mean is total wealth divided by the number of families, which a few very rich families can drag far upward. As The Associated Press' Christopher Rugaber put it, The median is the midpoint between the richest and poorest families. The typical family held $215,900 in 2025, up 2 percent in real terms; the average, $1,241,500, up 7 percent.

A lead inside the margin of error

Every survey estimate carries a standard error, a measure of how much it would wobble with a different sample. A rough calculation by Daybreak Wire using the Fed's published standard errors, treating the two estimates as independent, finds that the $73,600 gap between the 75-and-older and 65-to-74 medians has a standard error of about $70,600. That is a ratio of about 1.04, well short of the 1.96 that statisticians usually require before calling a difference real.

The gap to families aged 55 to 64 is $93,000, against a standard error of about $83,000. Neither lead clears the bar. The Fed makes no such claim. Its report says that although the statistical significance of the results generally is not addressed, it highlights findings that are significant or are interesting in a broader context, and it publishes standard errors for Tables 1 and 2.

The 37 percent jump itself, from $367,300 to $504,900, is a gain of about $137,600 with a standard error of about $73,300. That is roughly 1.88, borderline rather than settled.

The Fed's wording is more careful than the rankings built on it. It wrote that families aged 75 or older had the largest net worth, exceeding levels by families that are nearly or recently retired. In 2022 the top spot belonged to families aged 65 to 74. Their median slipped 4 percent this time, from $448,600 to $431,300.

CBS News reported that households headed by 65- to 74-year-olds "saw their wealth increase by 37%." The Fed's Table 2 puts that 37 percent on the 75-and-older group instead.

What lifted the oldest families

The Fed's answer is specific. A footnote concedes that the share of families older than 75 grew, which could in theory explain a rise, but concludes that in this instance, the increase in net worth was primarily driven by an increase in the value of retirement accounts. In Daybreak Wire's calculations from the Fed's public data files, the median balance among 75-and-older families holding a retirement account went from about $143,400 to about $257,000, while the share holding one rose from 41.8 to 44.6 percent.

Stocks sit behind those accounts. Among stock-owning families, median holdings rose 36 percent, from $56,900 to $77,400, yet participation slipped from 58 percent to 56 percent. The gains accrued to fewer households: 31 percent of families in the bottom half by usual income hold stock, against 97 percent in the top decile.

Homes mattered too, more quietly: among 75-and-older owners, Daybreak Wire's calculations put median equity at about $300,000, up from about $251,700.

Notice what moved, though. The median for the oldest group rose 37 percent while its mean rose only 10 percent, to $1.96 million. If a few very rich families had driven the result, the mean would have outrun the median. Instead the middle of the group climbed, and its mean is only 3.9 times its median, the smallest ratio of any age bracket.

This is where the "18 million households now rank as the richest" framing falls apart. Eighteen million is simply how many families are headed by someone 75 or older: 13.4 percent of 135.0 million, up from 12.0 percent in 2022. It is a headcount of an age group, the smallest one, not a count of rich households. In Daybreak Wire's calculations, about 31.7 percent of them sit below the national median, while 33.7 percent hold $1 million or more.

A 56% loss is $2,100

The sharpest contrast in the coverage is also the easiest to get wrong. The bottom quarter of families by net worth saw its median fall from $3,800 to $1,700, a 56 percent drop, or about $2,100. The top tenth by net worth saw its median rise 19 percent, from $4,152,700 to $4,935,200, a gain of $782,500. The top gain is roughly 360 to 370 times the bottom loss.

Neither group is a fixed set of people. Each survey is a fresh cross-section, and families are re-sorted every time, so nobody was followed from 2022 to 2025. "The poorest lost 56%" should read: the median family in the bottom quarter by net worth holds less than its counterpart did three years earlier. By Daybreak Wire's rough standard-error test, that fall is statistically solid. The top-decile gain, at about 1.91, is borderline.

The ladder is the sturdier finding: the higher the rung, the bigger the gain, and the bottom rung fell.

Two different "top tenths" are also in print. AP and CBS reported that the median net worth of the richest one-tenth jumped 31 percent to about $3.6 million (the Fed's figure, $3,669,900, rounds to $3.7 million). In the Fed report, that group is the top 10 percent by usual income, whose median net worth went from $2,797,500 to $3,669,900. The top 10 percent by net worth is the $4,935,200 group, up 19 percent.

Investopedia and IndexBox quoted a bottom-fifth figure of $12,840, down from $18,490. That comes from the Fed's public-data tables; the report says the lowest income fifth went from $15,300 to $14,400. Same survey, two sets of numbers, and this piece uses the report's.

The same survey at 35, at 62 and near zero

Families under 35 fell furthest, with the median down 23 percent to $33,000. The Fed attributes this to the unwinding of business equity gains between 2019 and 2022, noting that median business equity fell 23 percent to $75,400.

Take a renter between 35 and 44, one of about 9.1 million such families in Daybreak Wire's calculations from the Fed's public data files. The typical one has about $8,600, against about $296,700 for owners the same age. The Fed says the monthly payment on a 30-year mortgage covering 80 percent of the median home's price, plus property taxes, was about 33 percent of monthly median family income, up from 26 percent in 2022, mostly because the average 30-year mortgage rate rose from 4.2 percent to 6.7 percent. The median home is worth more than 4.5 times median family income.

Now picture a 62-year-old. The typical family aged 55 to 64 holds $411,900. But in the same public-file calculations, 36.9 percent hold no IRA or 401(k)-type account at all. Among those who do, the median balance is about $239,000 against a mean of $670,200. Plain arithmetic: $239,000 over 20 years is $11,950 a year, before growth, tax or Social Security. And 19.6 percent were behind on loan payments, double the 9.3 percent in 2022.

And then there is the bottom quarter, about 33.8 million families. About 32.4 percent have negative net worth, roughly 11.0 million families, and only 11.3 percent own a home. And 32.9 percent were behind on loan payments in the past year, up from 20.9 percent in 2022. The Fed's mean for the group improved, from -$5,800 to -$4,300, so the typical family got poorer while the group's average net worth, still negative, rose slightly.

Behind on payments, and who carries it

The share of all families late on a payment in the past year jumped from 12.2 percent to 19.6 percent. Families two months or more late rose from 4.9 to 8.2 percent. The 2013 survey recorded 14.9 percent late. Families with debt payments above 40 percent of income climbed from 6.5 to 8.6 percent.

Age sorts this sharply. In Daybreak Wire's calculations, 28.2 percent of families aged 35 to 44 were behind, against 5.1 percent of those 75 and older. The group that gained the most owes the least.

Cards tell the same story. Across all families, 44.7 percent carry a balance, and the average card interest rate rose from 14.6 to 21.4 percent. Among families aged 45 to 54 who carry one, the median grew from $3,300 to $5,100 even though fewer carry a balance. The fight over credit card late fees sits on top of numbers like these. And 12 percent of families now have a buy-now-pay-later balance, up from 7 percent, a debt that is headed for credit scores.

The Fed offers a mitigating note: Borrowers look less financially fragile when their debts are scaled to their assets rather than to their income. Median leverage for debtors is 26.9 percent.

Who the survey leaves out

Start with the top. Persons listed by Forbes magazine as being among the wealthiest 400 people in the U.S. are excluded from sampling. A supplemental list sample drawn from tax-return records over-represents the wealthy, but only about 24 percent of that list completed interviews, and about 18 percent in the strata with the likely wealthiest families. The Fed says the tendency to refuse participation is highly correlated with net worth and adjusts the weights for nonresponse.

A "family" here is the primary economic unit, closer to the Census Bureau's "household," and age belongs to the reference person. CBS noted that the survey doesn't capture this year's reacceleration of price increases sparked by soaring energy costs, a pressure that also bears on retirees' cost-of-living adjustments.

To check any wealth headline, ask whether it is a median or a mean, which slice it covers, and how big the margin of error is. The Fed's data page carries the tables, and the AP and CBS accounts are worth reading beside them (The Associated Press, CBS News).

The Fed says wealth inequality appears little changed since 2022. The typical family in the bottom quarter holds $1,700, and the next survey is three years away.