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Real Net Worth Growth (Since 2023)
Comparison of wealth growth between top earners and bottom earners.
Primary Sources
Real World Economics: Why the 'K-shaped' economy is not OK, boomer
Edward Lotterman “The children are not doing well!” One has to reverse the usual boilerplate phrasing from family letters to describe our nation’s contemporary economy. Moreover, as spring corn planters roll across millions of acres, few on farms or in cities would echo Shakespeare’s Richard III by asserting that “now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer. … ” Yes, U.S. households and farmers sure did endure a winter of discontent. But frustrations continue to grow. The summer weather may be glorious, but the US. economy has thunderclouds from horizon to horizon. And don’t look for improvement soon. Something now dubbed “the K-shaped economy” is at the root of much justifiable discontent right now. It refers to an economy that is moving in two different directions for different groups of people. Imagine the economy plotted on a graph — over time, the upper arm of the “K” moves up, the lower down, signifying not only that the rich are getting richer, but their distance from the poor is getting ever-greater. Extended out, one can imagine an unsustainable situation where fewer and fewer people can afford perhaps even the basics of life, as the upper arm moves farther up. Eventually, the well-to-do, or working rich, start hurting too. For this ever-dwindling minority of rich households, things are and will remain fine and even get better. For now, these are higher-educated, higher-income households that, on average, include older cohorts of people, especially the baby boomers born from 1946 through 1964. Now in their sixties and seventies, they have had it better than any other birth cohort in U.S. history. So do some people with education who were born later but got established in careers and personal finances before the economy turned sour for the ever-increasing lower arm of the “K”. Boomers’ adult children are not doing as well as their parents and their adult grandchildren even worse. In relative terms, they have lower incomes and lower net worth than their boomer forebears did at the same age. It is harder for them to find work and much harder to rent or buy shelter. Basic medical care and insurance coverage chew up a larger fraction of earnings than in the past, not to mention general inflation. Student loans, once modest ($4,500 for boomer me at the end of grad school in 1980), now make huge divots in monthly budgets lasting well into one’s professional years — perhaps even superseding the earning potential of the degrees they paid for....
Two grim realities are keeping the K-shaped economy alive
Two grim realities are keeping the K-shaped economy alive By Juliana Kaplan You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email. and Madison Hoff You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email. Inflation is disproportionately slamming lower-income workers, while the top of the income distribution has benefited from roaring stock prices. Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images 2026-05-02T09:01:01.283Z New research provides insights into what's been powering the US's K-shaped economy. Lower earners are affected more by inflation and gas prices. Many of them also don't get to benefit from the stock market, unlike higher earners. The prongs of the K-shaped economy are being propped up by two dreary economic realities: lower earners are getting hit harder by inflation, and left behind by blockbuster stock market gains. A new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York looks at how the US economy slowly morphed into a K-shape where higher earners are thriving, or at least holding steady, and lower earners' economic fortunes are backsliding. It's a post-pandemic development, after a robust labor market and pandemic-era stimulus bolstered the economy's lowest earners. As inflation surges again and the stock market continues its roller coaster ride to the top, lower earners probably won't be working their way up the K anytime soon. As lower earners started to see their wages grow at a higher rate in the wake of the pandemic, higher prices were lurking in the shadows, ready to take a bite out of those increases."We see that beginning in late 2022, low-income households consistently faced higher inflation than middle- and high-income households did," NY Federal Reserve researchers Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy, wrote. "Specifically, the lowest-income households have experienced inflation above the national average, restraining their spending."Oil shocks and disruptions to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz have erased recent progress on inflation, pushing it to its highest rate since May 2024 in March. Gas prices rose 18.9% year over year in March, the largest increase since August 2022. Lower earners tend to allocate more of their spending toward gas than the top; Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed 3.5% of spending was on gas in 2024 for the lowest 10% of consumer units by income, compared to 1.9% for the h...
Explaining the K-Shaped Economy: What's Behind the Divide? - Liberty ...
An analysis of the recent divergence in consumer spending in which higher-income households experience faster spending growth than lower-income households.
K-Shaped Recovery Economics: Structural Divergence After the Polycrisis
Two indices, one global economy, two completely different stories. This is the empirical signature of a K-shaped recovery economics: a structural divergence, not a temporary bounce, in which one set of firms, sectors, regions, and households accelerated through the post-2020 polycrisis while another stagnated or fell behind.
