Net Worth Iso-Percentiles Across Age Brackets: The Wealth and Poverty of Our Nation In Five Pictures

The Rich . . .
(the 90th percentile and above, where the top 0.1%, the top 1%, and the top 10% reside)

. . . the Upper Middle . . .
(the 70th to 90th percentile, where college graduates tend to gather)

. . . the Middle . . .
(being the 30th to 70th percentile middle, the "heart of America")

. . . the Lower Middle . . .
(the 10th to 30th percentile, where iso-percentiles continue rising even into the septuagenarian and octogenarian age brackets)

. . . and the Poor
(the 10th percentile and below, including those over-indebted with negative net worth)

Data Source and Methodology: All data are extracted from the Federal Reserve's 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, with data set last updated September 4, 2014. The Net Worth dollar figures are for households, inflation-adjusted to 2013 dollars. Percentiles are calculated by a) ordering the data by net worth within each age bracket and b) accumulating the statistical weights (included in the data set and associated with the Fed's multiple imputation technique) corresponding to the ordered data points.

Fed's Technical Note:  "Missing data in the survey have been imputed five times using a multiple imputation technique. The information is stored in five separate imputation replicates (implicates). Thus, for the 6,492 families interviewed for the survey, there are 32,460 records in the data set. Ten observations were deleted for the public version of the data set for purposes of disclosure avoidance; thus, there are 32,410 records in the public data set for 6,482 families."