http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/business/economy/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-at-least-30-years-pew-study-says.html 2014-12-17 16:34:07 U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in at Least 30 Years, Study Finds The median net worth of upper-income families doubled in a 30-year period, but shrank for lower-income families, a report from the Pew Research Center found. === The wealthy are getting wealthier. As for everyone else, no such luck. A Last year, the median net worth of upper-income families reached $639,400, nearly seven times as much of those in the middle, and nearly 70 times the level of those at the bottom of the income ladder. There has been growing attention to the issue of income inequality, particularly the plight of those earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Although income and wealth are related (the more you make, the more you can save), the wealth gap zeros in on a different aspect of financial well-being: how much money and other assets you have accumulated over time, including the value of your home and car plus any stocks and bonds. Think of it as “a measure of the family ‘nest egg,'” as Pew calls it — a hoard that can sustain a household during an emergency, like the loss of a job, and in the long run can see someone through retirement. While those at the top have managed to recoup some of the wealth lost during the financial crisis, middle-income families have not made any gains. “The Great Recession destroyed a significant amount of middle-income and lower-income families’ wealth, and the economic ‘recovery’ has yet to be felt for them,” the report concluded. Pew, which used data from the Federal Reserve, defined middle income as $44,000 a year for a family of four, while a yearly income of $132,000 for the same-size family pushed a household into the upper ranks. About one in five families qualifies for that higher status, while 46 percent occupy the middle range. The median household net worth last year for those in the middle was $96,500, only slightly above the $94,300 mark it hit in 1983 (after being adjusted for inflation). A poor household actually had a higher median net worth 30 years ago ($11,400 in 1983) than it counted last year ($9,300). Compare those results with the top fifth of income earners. In 1983, when the Fed began collecting the data, that group had a median wealth of $318,000; in 2013 it owned more than twice that. Other economists have traced the growing wealth gap to a much narrower slice of the population. In The report on Wednesday is the second in a week from Pew detailing how different groups of Americans are faring financially more than five years after the recession ended. The The latest report highlights how the fortunes of the middle class have eroded. And the results, the report said, “could help explain why, by other measures, the majority of Americans are not feeling the impact of the economic recovery, despite an improvement in the unemployment rate, stock market and housing prices.”