Finance
Stock Wealth Surges for the Oldest Americans While the Young Miss Out
Many households reduced their equity investments from 2007 to 2016. Those headed by people 75 and over loaded up.
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U.S. stocks have more than tripled in value since 2009, but the bull market has left a lot of Americans behind. In almost every age group, the share of families owning equities—either directly or through funds and retirement accounts—declined from 2007 to 2016, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent Survey of Consumer Finances. There’s one prominent exception: households headed by someone 75 or older.
Almost 49 percent of those households own stocks, up from 40 percent in 2007, just before the financial crisis, and about 35 percent in 2013, as many Americans were still recovering from the wreckage. It’s the highest number since the Fed began its triennial report on Americans and their money in 1989.