I would wager a lot of "wealth" is in the value of the homes they live in. That is it is illiquid wealth they cannot use. When you factor in medical debt, their liquid wealth is a lot less rosy.
Housing is actually quite liquid as it is incredibly easy to mortgage. More likely you are overestimating how much housing value is actually there. The majority of American homeowners have already tapped into that liquidity. Owning a house that is worth, say, $1MM on the open market doesn't necessarily mean that your net worth is $1MM.
There is a huge difference between someone with a net worth of 1M (owns a small home, still needs to work for a living) and a net worth of 30M (can get more than 1M per year of capital revenue without working).
Don't they usually take out the primary residence when doing the calculation? It still doesn't mean someone is completely liquid as I'm guessing many people have their money in tax deferred accounts they can't access until old age.
Don't they usually take out the primary residence when doing the calculation?
Typically, it would seem that is indeed the case from most calculations I've seen. I mean, are you really worth a million dollars if you have to be homeless to access those dollars?