WealthIndex

Methodology

Page updated September 2026

WealthIndex answers one question — how much money does it take to be rich? — with other people's data and our own arithmetic. This page documents exactly where every number comes from, what we compute from it, and where the seams are. If a figure on the homepage confuses you, the answer is probably here.

The raw material: published sources only

We don't survey anyone, estimate anyone's fortune ourselves, or blend sources into synthetic figures. Every number on the site traces to one of these:

  • Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) 2025 — the gold standard for US household wealth: median net worth ($215,900), mean net worth ($1,241,500), and net worth by age cohort. Published every three years; released October 9, 2026.
  • DQYDJ's analysis of SCF microdata — the percentile breakpoints the Fed doesn't publish directly: top 25% ($812,492), top 10% ($2,550,306), top 5% ($4,907,372), top 1% ($16,463,320), in nominal dollars. Their full 1–99 percentile table powers the wealth distribution explorer.
  • Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) — quarterly shares of total US household net worth by wealth percentile group (top 1%, next 9%, middle 40%, bottom 50%), 1989 to present. Built from the SCF plus the Financial Accounts of the United States.
  • World Inequality Report 2022 — global thresholds in purchasing-power-parity euros: average adult wealth (€72,900), top-10% entry (€125,500), top-1% entry (€807,300).
  • UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 — global millionaire counts (60 million adults over $1M) and wealth concentration stats, end-2024.
  • SmartAsset's 2025 study of IRS 2022 data — top-1% income thresholds for all 50 states, adjusted to May 2025 dollars. National average: $731,492.
  • Forbes World's Billionaires 2026 — the annual snapshot (3,428 billionaires, $20.1T combined), published March 2026.
  • US Census Bureau (CPS ASEC) — median household income ($83,730, 2024) and income-percentile anchors.

Every figure on the homepage links directly to its source. If we can't cite it, it doesn't go on the page.

What we compute: brackets, not percentiles

Here's the honest limitation at the heart of the calculator. The published data gives us breakpoints — we know the exact dollar line for the median and for the top 25%, 10%, 5%, and 1%. We do not know the full distribution curve between them. So when you enter $500,000, the calculator can't tell you "you're at the 61.3rd percentile," because nobody published that curve. What it can tell you is which two breakpoints you sit between — "above the median, below the top 25%" — and that's what it does.

The "Complete the picture" calculator goes one step further: give it a percentile instead of a dollar figure and it interpolates linearly between the published breakpoints to estimate the dollars you'd need. Linear interpolation between wealth thresholds is a rough approximation — real wealth distributions are lumpy — which is why those outputs carry the "estimate" tag and the result text says so explicitly.

Two series that must never be mixed

The top-1% chart page carries two separate series, and confusing them is the most common error in wealth writing:

  • Series B (the main chart): the entry threshold. The minimum net worth to get into the top 1% — the poorest member of the club. Nominal dollars, from DQYDJ/SCF: $7.88M (2013) → $16.46M (2025).
  • Series A (long-run context): the mean. The average net worth of top-1% households, inflation-adjusted to 2010 dollars, from Edward Wolff's NBER series (1962–2010).

The mean is always far above the entry threshold — averages are dragged up by the billionaires at the very top. They answer different questions ("what does it take to get in?" vs. "how rich is the club on average?"), they're in different dollar vintages, and we chart them separately with an explicit warning never to compare them directly.

Wealth shares: who owns the pie

The "Where America's wealth actually sits" section charts a different cut of the Fed's data: not thresholds but shares — what fraction of all US household wealth each percentile group owns. The source is the Fed's Distributional Financial Accounts, which distributes the national balance sheet (the Financial Accounts of the United States) across households using the Survey of Consumer Finances. It is the closest thing to an official quarterly scoreboard of US wealth concentration, running from 1989:Q3 to the latest quarter.

Two things to know about these shares. First, they are not directly comparable to the entry thresholds elsewhere on the page: a threshold is the poorest household in a bracket, a share is the bracket's slice of the total. Second, the DFA's top-1% share (32.5% in 2026:Q2) runs a couple of points below the World Inequality Database's estimate (34.78% for 2024). The gap is methodological, not an error: WID builds Distributional National Accounts with heavier adjustments for top-tail wealth that household surveys systematically undercount, while the DFA hews closer to the survey-based Financial Accounts. We publish both, each labeled with its source, and explain the difference next to the charts.

Global figures: PPP euros, not dollars

International wealth comparisons have a currency problem: a dollar of wealth buys a very different life in Mumbai than in Manhattan. The World Inequality Report solves it with purchasing-power parity — adjusting for what money actually buys locally — and reports in euros. So the global top-1% line is €807,300 PPP, not $807,300. Our Global calculator tab compares your raw number against those PPP thresholds without converting currencies, which makes it a rough comparison rather than a precise ranking. We say so on the page, and we repeat it here.

States: income, not wealth

No citable source publishes net-worth thresholds by state, so the state table uses the best available substitute: top-1% income thresholds from SmartAsset's analysis of IRS tax-filer data. Income and wealth are different things — a high earner who spends everything can have a below-median net worth — and the page states this next to the table. City-level thresholds aren't published from any current single source we trust, so we don't publish them either. A missing table is better than a made-up one.

Billionaires: why a snapshot

Forbes maintains a real-time billionaire tracker, but we publish the annual list (March 2026: 3,428 billionaires, $20.1T combined) instead. A fortune built on one company's stock can move tens of billions in a week; any "live" number we froze on the page would be stale within days and misleading within months. The annual list is audited, dated, and citable — and we link Forbes' live tracker for anyone who wants the current score.

Update cadence

  • SCF: every three years. The 2025 survey was published October 9, 2026 and is now the basis for all SCF-derived figures on this site; the next survey lands in 2029.
  • DFA wealth shares: quarterly. The Fed publishes each quarter's distribution about two and a half months after quarter-end; we refresh the wealth-gap charts when it lands.
  • Forbes: annual list each March/April, plus spot checks against the live list.
  • SmartAsset/UBS: annual publications; state and global figures refresh when they do.
  • Fortune & Folly: a new story every day, each verified against a reputable outlet before publishing.

Each homepage section states its source vintage and last-update date. When a figure changes, the page changes with it — and if we ever get something wrong, we fix it and note the correction on the About page.

What this site is not

WealthIndex is a data reference, not a financial advisor. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or do anything with your money. Brackets are educational estimates computed between published data points; they will not match any individual's exact standing, and exact standing isn't the point — the shape of the distribution is.