America's Balance Sheet: A Smaller Bottom Line
Last year, if all the wealth in the country had been distributed equally, each American could have claimed ownership of $60,000 out of the country's $15 trillion total worth.</br></br>Ten years earlier, the figure for U.S. domestic net worth was $7.4 trillion, less than half as much, and the amount per person was a little more than $33,000.</br></br>But of course the nation's wealth is not distributed equally, and if the figures are adjusted for inflation, a far different picture emerges. Instead of being more than 200 percent as wealthy a country as a decade earlier, "real" (inflation-adjusted) domestic net worth has gone up only 18.4 percent. On a per person basis, real wealth rose 6.7 percent, just over half a percent a year.</br></br>In addition, compared to earlier 10-year periods, the numbers in a new report by the Federal Reserve paint a stark picture. It is not that the United States is getting poorer, but the rate of its growth in cumulative wealth has become markedly lower.</br></br>The basic figures on the nation's wealth are part of the Fed's annual report, "Balance Sheets for the U.S. Economy, 1949-88."