American seniors, the fabled Baby Boomer generation, refuse to go silently into the night. New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows the average wealth of seniors jumped by about $91,000 during the pandemic years, far outpacing gains made by other generations of younger Americans.
Credit the gains to the value of home and stock values even as most seniors no longer get regular paychecks having long since retired or cut back their employment status.
The $91,000 was the median increase in net worth between 2019 and 2022 for households headed by someone age 65 or older, the Fed said. Households headed by someone 40 to 64 years old saw median gains of $57,800 while those headed by people 18 to 39 saw the smallest gains in dollars at $31,600, although since they were starting from a lower base, they enjoyed the biggest percentage increases.
Bloomberg reported that, “Seniors normally have more wealth than younger people, but the greater gains for older Americans in the last few years have made that disparity starker,” citing a recent paper co-authored by Lowell Ricketts, a data scientist at the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity.
“Though it’s important to note that this isn’t a zero sum situation,” Ricketts said in an email to Bloomberg, “The extra $32,000 for the typical family in the younger group can improve both financial stability and economic mobility.”
Slightly more than half of seniors’ gains in net worth came from nonfinancial assets like home values, while retirement accounts and other financial assets contributed the remaining 48%, Bloomberg said.
So while younger generations continue to gain in wealth and spending power, older Americans remain a potent target for companies looking for shoppers with financial wealth.