Can you guess who’s been loading up on stocks at a faster pace than anyone during the past 30 years? It’s not Wall Street titans and kajillionaires on the Forbes richest lists. It’s mid- to lower-income households, particularly those pulling in less than $42,000 a year.
In the late 1980s, fewer than one-third of Americans owned equities. Fast forward to 2016 and, according to Federal Reserve Board data, that number shot up to more than half (52%) of U.S. households. (Go us!)
Even better, it’s not just wealthy households adding equities to their already brimming coffers: It’s households on the lowest rungs of the income ladder (those making less than $24,000 annually and between $24,000 and $42,000) participating in the great wealth-building machine that is the stock market. Stock ownership more than doubled for these households between 1989 and 2016, according to Investment Company Institute tabulations of the Fed data.