Wealth Inequality in America drawn to scale

The average 0.01% household has … and beyond

The 136,095 households at the top. Richer than 99.9% of U.S. households. Keep going ↑

Free PDF. Tape it up on your wall, your classroom, your city council chamber. We dare you to print the whole thing.

Educator and activist packets: lesson plans, discussion guides, and printed copies of the graph.

Each column above is 1% of American households, lined up from poorest to richest. Picture each one as a stack of $100 bills: the median household’s stack is about 9 inches tall. The average top-1% household’s is 145 feet, and it keeps getting taller and taller…

Inspired by Politizane’s video Wealth Inequality in America.

Share of all wealth held by American households

Bars 1–99: estimated net worth at each percentile, 2023 Survey of Consumer Finances, adjusted to 2026 dollars (×1.1); the poorest 8% are shown with their reported debt. Top 1%: average, Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts, Q1 2026. “Think” and “Ideal”: Norton & Ariely (2011), spread across percentiles for illustration. Sources & method · The Companion (PDF)

This is the bottom. The graph starts above you.