"Where Has All the Money Gone?" by Edward N. Wolff, in The Milken Institute Review (Third Quarter, 2001), 1250 Fourth St., 2nd fl., Santa Monica, Calif. 90401–1353. Yes, the rich got richer than other Overall, writes Wolff, an economist at Americans did during the late, lamented New York University, the richest 20 percent economic boom. But there’s a bit more to the of American households claimed 91 percent story than that. of the increase in wealth between 1983 and 1998. The remaining 80 percent garnered only nine percent of the gain. (Thanks to social mobility, however, a lot of families moved into or out of the top 20 percent.)

The middle 20 percent of households enjoyed only a 10 percent increase in their net wealth during those 15 years, from $55,500 to $61,000. Americans at the bottom of the scale fared worst of all. In 1983, 15.5 percent of households had no net worth or were in debt. By 1989 that number had grown to 17.9 percent, and it remained virtually unchanged through 1998.

The share of all wealth owned by the top one percent of U.S. households grew quickly between 1983 and 1989, but then slowed in the years up to 1998. Overall, their share increased from 33.8 percent to 38.1 percent. (Wolff’s data do not extend through the recent Wall Street downturn.) Even so, the number of millionaires jumped 54 percent during the 1990s, and the number of decamillionaires (those with net worth totaling $10 million or more) almost quadrupled.

Wolff sees a disturbing trend in the rise of Americans’ indebtedness, which grew from 13 percent of household wealth in 1989 to 15 percent in 1998. Forget the usual suspects, credit card and other consumer debt. Bigger mortgages and home equity loans are the problem. Net home equity (the value of a house minus outstanding mortgages) dropped from 24 percent of total household assets in 1983 to 18 percent in 1998. "Middle class households, it appears, were spending down their net worth to maintain their living standards," Wolff writes.

Despite the stock market mania of the ’90s, most Americans still have the lion’s share of their wealth in real estate. (The home ownership rate rose three percentage points, to 66.3 percent, between 1983 and 1998.) Less than a third of households owned stock worth more than $10,000 in 1998.

Overall, median wealth grew a bit more slowly than median income during the 15-year period. It was up 11.1 percent, while income grew by 13.8 percent. Both measures point to the same conclusion, says Wolff: "The boom of the 1990s... bypassed most Americans. The rich have been the main beneficiaries."