Older Americans may be trading in hustling for retirement, but that hasn’t stopped them from getting richer.
“The baby [boomer] generation has really gobbled up a huge share of household wealth, so it’s left a lot less for other age cohorts,” Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University, told Fortune.
America’s septuagenarians were raised by parents who came of age during the Great Depression and learned the hard way the lessons of frugality and the importance of saving money. But the baby boomer generation owes a great deal of their financial security to the stars aligning during their formative years.
“They weren’t able to enjoy the big appreciation of house prices to the same extent as baby boomers,” Wolff said.
But part of the equation of Gen Z’s relatively paltry share of wealth is simply because they haven’t had as much time to acquire it, Michael Walden, professor emeritus of economics at North Carolina State University, told Fortune.
“It makes logical sense that older people will accumulate greater percentages of wealth at any point in time because they’ve had more years to invest and reap the returns of their investments,” Walden said.
Walden said the Great Wealth Transfer is coming, but Gen Z and millennials shouldn’t rely on the death of a loved one to begin their wealth acquisition journey in earnest.
“It’s hard to target when that’s going to come, so I would argue to any young person that I would be talking to, have a plan, be consistent with the plan,” he said.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Dec. 8, 2025.
