The Young Are Richer Than You Think

The generational story we're often told is simple: Boomers got houses and pensions, Millennials got the short end of the stick with student debt and a sequence of economic crises, and Gen Z got an even worse deal, but at least they got TikTok. The fact that Boomers have more money today than other generations is obviously right. With decades of earning and compounding on their side, comparing Millennials' current wealth with Boomers' only tells us that 35-year-olds have less money than 65-year-olds. Duh.

A few years back, Ernie Tedeschi (Head of Economic Insights and Research at Stripe) tweeted an analysis making a more interesting point: Gen Z and Millennials in the US are not poorer than Boomers were at the same age. A narrative violation.

Below, I tried to reproduce Tedeschi's analysis using public data from the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances, and extended it beyond Tedeschi's initial look at medians to assess wealth distribution more broadly. Click around to see the numbers across generations, diving into specific ages or percentiles. There's some nuance around family composition and the timing of events, but it's pretty clear that wealth is greatly skewed, and that younger generations are richer than the usual story would have you believe.

And yes, all these numbers are in 2025 dollars, adjusted for inflation.

The numbers are surprising. At age 35, median Millennial wealth per adult is $56k, almost identical to the median Boomer's at that age. At the 90th percentile, though, Millennials have $410k against Boomers' $309k. The latest SCF only observes Gen Z into its mid-twenties, but the situation looks even brighter for them: By 25, the median Zoomer had $16k, nearly twice as much as both Boomers and Millennials, who at that age just had $9k.

Let's not fool ourselves; plenty of younger adults still face high housing costs, debt, and a tough labor market. The fact that folks in their 20s and 30s have cheap TVs, air travel, and smartphones but can't access homeownership or reliable health insurance is clearly a problem. But at the same time, if we trust the Fed's data, a nontrivial segment of Gen Z already has a lot of money.

A bit on methodology. The SCF surveys a new sample every few years, so the lines do not follow the same people as they age. For the per-adult view, I join the Fed's summary data to its full public file to use the spouse or partner's age. A couple becomes two observations, each getting half the family's net worth and their own age. The family view keeps the full net worth and uses the reference person's age, getting us closer to a household-level view.

Each point pools people within two years of the stated age. Age 35, for example, includes ages 33 through 37. The SCF fills missing answers five plausible ways, producing five completed datasets called "implicates." I calculate each percentile in all five and average the results, with at least 75 original survey families in every group. I've also converted the data from 2022 dollars to 2025 dollars to make the numbers more comparable to current prices.

The Federal Reserve says results from their next survey are expected in late 2026. I am looking forward to re-running the analysis with new data when it comes out.

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I started looking into wealth demographics because I'm building financial tools for folks in their late 20s and early 30s. If you want to get a sneak peek at what I'm working on, or can spare 30 minutes to walk me through your financial situation, please reach out. If you're in SF, I'll buy you coffee. Otherwise, we can just get on a video call.