The Recent Rise of U.S. National Wealth

Abstract

past decade: specifically, from $69 trillion to $153 trillion between 2012 and 2021, a 220% rate of increase. It has continued to rapidly increase even after controlling for inflation and economic growth. This essay documents and decomposes the changes in national wealth for the past two decades and discusses the potential implications of these changes for the U.S. economy. We obtain U.S. wealth data from the Financial Accounts of the United States provided by the Federal Reserve System. Wealth is defined as the total nominal value of tangible assets controlled by various sectors in the U.S. economy.1 Roughly, there are four main sectors: