[bunderbunder]

Very interesting reads, thank you for sharing them.

However, just looking at the time scale over which the net worth changes described in the original article occurred, and their magnitudes, it doesn't seem likely that the effect they describe can be explained so easily by social factors. Hypothesizing that it's just a social change related to shrinking households leads to some interesting questions about what that really means in practical terms: Did the bottom 5% go from an average net worth of -$9K to -27K over the course of a decade because, on average, three individuals in the red would get together to form a combined household with pooled debts? Did the 25th percentile go from an average of $10k to an average of $3k because of parents getting divorced and kids moving out en masse? Meanwhile wealthy people's family structures remain static.

I think the data you link and the data in the article are reconcilable. Income and wealth are different things, after all. Perhaps wealthier folks' net worth dropped less precipitously during the Great Recession because they experienced nothing worse than a drop in the valuation of their primary residence. Meanwhile less wealthy folks suffered a greater loss because they were more likely to get foreclosed on, therefore suffering a loss of all the equity they had built up in their homes. This trend wouldn't show up as much in the income numbers because losing your house doesn't necessarily coincide with losing your job, certainly not the way things were playing out in 2008.

[alexeisadeski3]

The wealthier folks were simply less leveraged:

1. If you own 10% equity in a home which declines in value 20%, you now have negative wealth. A 200% decline.

2. If you own 50% equity in a home which declines in value 20%, you have suffered a mere 40% decline.

[bunderbunder]

Not sure why someone voted you down, that quite believably would play into it and certainly doesn't seem to contradict the numbers in the paper in any obvious way.

(The wealthiest folks did see an increase in wealth over the 10-year time considered by the paper while everyone else saw a loss, but that's possibly because the wealthiest 10% also had a comparatively smaller amount of their assets tied up in their homes to begin with.)