\n By 2025, that number had climbed to 68%.\n <\/p>\n
\n There\u2019s a name for the phenomenon: the K-shaped economy<\/a>. The rich keep getting richer, and everyone else is getting left behind, at least by comparison.\n <\/p>\n \n The K has gotten significantly wider recently \u2013 particularly over the past 3 years since the inflation crisis.\n <\/p>\n \n But it\u2019s not just about how much people make: It\u2019s about what they own and how they spend their money.\n <\/p>\n \n Good news: Americans across all income brackets got richer over the past 3 years!\n <\/p>\n \n But wealthy Americans\u2019 net worth is growing at a much faster pace than middle- and lower-income Americans\u2019. The net worth of the top 1% grew 30% over the past 3 years. The middle 40% grew by less than 10% over that same period.\n <\/p>\n \n Why? It comes down two three things: housing, stocks and inflation.\n <\/p>\n Housing & Stocks<\/p>\n \n The top 20% own more than half of America\u2019s overall home value \u2014 which has surged in the past several years. And as mortgage rates have risen,lower-income Americans have gotten locked out from the American Dream. Just 3% of America\u2019s home value is owned by the bottom 20%.\n <\/p>\n \n Further exacerbating the divide: Immediately after the pandemic, when mortgage rates plunged to historic lows, American homeowners unlocked $430 billion worth of home equity by refinancing their mortgages. That gave homeowners a significant economic advantage.\n <\/p>\n \n More than three-quarters of America\u2019s financial assets, including stocks, are owned by the top 20% \u2014 and more than a quarter by the top 1%. The S&P 500 has gained 86.2% over the past 3 years. In contrast, cash has gained less than 1% a year over the past several years, on average.\n <\/p>\n \n Americans in different income brackets experience inflation differently: The necessities that lower-income Americans spend a larger percentage of their incomes on (particularly housing and food) have gotten more expensive compared to the stuff wealthier Americans buy. That adds up over time: Between 2005 and 2023, actual consumer prices grew 57% for the bottom 20% and just 46% for the top 20%, according to the Minneapolis Fed<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Americans who made less than $40,000 a year pulled back on their spending starting in January 2023 and only started treading water again in September 2024. And over the past three years, they\u2019ve grown their inflation-adjusted spending by just 1.3% \u2014 compared to 7.6% for households who make $125,000 or more.\n <\/p>\n \n High-earners\u2019 strong spending has boosted overall demand for goods and services, helping keep some prices higher for all Americans.\n <\/p>\n \n So wealthy Americans don\u2019t just have more money, they have better opportunities to grow their wealth than less well-off Americans: They have access to the housing and stock markets that lower-income Americans are locked out of. And they\u2019re more insulated from inflation.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary The wealth gap in America has widened dramatically over the past three decades, with the top 10%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-450972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/gettyimages-2277712840.jpg\")
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