The
recent economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no
more wealth than in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of
accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday in a New York Times story.
A hypothetical family richer than half the nation’s families and
poorer than the other half had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, compared
with $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices
directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss.
Families’ income also continued to decline, a trend that predated the
crisis but accelerated over the same period. Median family income fell
to $45,800 in 2010 from $49,600 in 2007. All figures were adjusted for
inflation.
The survey also confirmed that Americans are shifting the kinds of debts
they carry. The share of families with credit card debt declined by 6.7
percentage points to 39.4 percent, and the median balance fell 16.1
percent to $2,600.
Families also reduced the number of credit cards that they carried, and
32 percent of families said they had no cards, up from 27 percent in
2007.
The new data comes from the Fed’s much-anticipated release on Monday
of its Survey of Consumer Finances, a report issued every three years
that is one of the broadest and deepest sources of information about the
financial health of American families.
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