Older Households Draw More on Wealth as Younger Families Lose Ground

Older Americans’ accumulated wealth may be helping sustain consumer spending as retirement income and investment transfers provide additional spending capacity while younger households face greater housing and debt pressures.

Inflation-adjusted median net worth rose 37% between 2022 and 2025 for families headed by someone age 75 or older, while it fell 23% for families headed by someone under 35. Median income for the oldest households increased 24%, compared with a 2% gain for households headed by someone under 35.

Retirement-income growth appeared to play an important role in improving the net worth of older households. Results varied across other age groups: Median net worth rose 5% for families ages 35 to 44 and 3% for those ages 55 to 64, while it fell 6% for families ages 45 to 54 and 4% for those ages 65 to 74.

The figures compare median results for different age groups in separate survey years. They do not track the same families over time.

Investment transfers also became a larger source of funds moving into household checking accounts. Net transfers from investment accounts equaled 6.8% of spending in April 2026, compared with 3.5% in April 2019 and 2.3% in 2015.

The analysis covered de-identified checking-account data from more than 20 million Chase customers between 2015 and 2026. During the three months ending in April 2026, 8.2% of individuals moved money from investment accounts into checking accounts, compared with 4% during the same period in 2019.

Among people age 65 and older in the top 10% of income earners, 37.3% made net investment-account withdrawals in 2025, up from 24.5% in 2019. Those withdrawals represented 14.9% of spending for the group, compared with 8% in 2019.

The transfers do not measure spending directly. Households may use the money to build checking balances or repay debt, but the flows indicate that investment wealth is becoming more available for household use. Investment withdrawals may reflect ordinary retirement distributions, the shift from traditional pensions to defined-contribution plans and a possible wealth effect from stock-market gains.

The pattern points to a generational divide in financial capacity, although it does not represent a broad improvement across U.S. households. Older households are more likely to hold retirement savings, investment portfolios and home equity, while younger households face greater exposure to housing costs and debt.

The trend adds distributional context to aggregate gains in U.S. household wealth, which do not show how evenly wealth is spread among households.