How this is calculated

Net worth and income (2022). The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances interviews a few thousand families every three years (4,602 in 2022) and weights them to stand for all U.S. families. Its public summary extract carries five “implicates” of every family (five copies with missing answers filled in different ways); all five are pooled and weighted by the survey weight WGT, which in this file is already divided by five (the weights over all 22,975 rows sum to 131.3 million families). Within each age band of the family head, the page computes the weighted value at every whole percentile from the 1st to the 99th. Your percentile is read off that grid, interpolating between neighbouring percentiles. Net worth is everything the family owns (homes, accounts, businesses, cars) minus everything it owes. Income is total before-tax income in 2021, from every source, which the Fed restates in 2022 dollars. Pensions that pay a fixed benefit and future Social Security are not counted as wealth.

Checking against the Fed. The Fed's published figures use its full data. The public file leaves out seven families' records (35 rows) and takes other steps to avoid disclosing who answered, which the SCF page and codebook describe, so estimates from it differ slightly. Here are the medians and means computed from the public file beside the ones the Fed published in its October 2023 Bulletin (Tables 1 and 2), in 2022 dollars:

Income, 5-year ages (2025). The Census Bureau's table HINC-02 counts households by money income in $5,000 steps up to “$200,000 and over”, for every five-year age of householder. Percentiles are read off the running count, assuming households are spread evenly inside each $5,000 step. Above $200,000 the table gives no detail, so the chart stops there and says what share of households is above it. Census's own medians (computed on $2,500 steps) are within $1,000 of these; see the table below. The Census counts households and 2025 dollars, the SCF families and 2022 dollars, so read the two income views side by side, not as one series.

Home equity and retirement accounts. For each age band, the families between the 40th and 60th percentiles of net worth (the middle fifth) and the families at or above the 90th (the top tenth) are summed separately; the shares are each group's total home equity (HOMEEQ: the value of the main home less the mortgages and home-equity lines on it) and total retirement accounts (RETQLIQ: IRAs, Keoghs, 401(k)-type and other account-type pension plans) as a share of its total net worth.

Same income, different wealth. Within each age band, families are split into fifths by income and the net worth of each fifth is summarized by its 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles (shown in the sidebar under Income).