At the Money: The Data Behind America’s Wealthy
At the Money: The Data Behind America’s Wealthy with Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick (September 30, 2026) In this episode of ‘At the Money,’ I speak with Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick about the data behind America’s wealthiest people. About this week’s guests: Owen Zidar is professor of Economics and Public Affairs… Read More The post At the Money: The Data Behind America’s Wealthy appeared first on The…
America is home to a significant number of wealthy individuals, and a new book by Princeton and University of Chicago professors Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick delves into the data behind who these wealthy people are and how they amassed their fortunes. In their book, "The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There," Zidar and Zwick discuss a number of eye-opening statistics.
One particularly striking figure is the 1-to-1,000 ratio between public CEOs and private business owners with at least $25 million in net worth. For every large, publicly traded company CEO in America, there are over a thousand private business owners who have achieved that level of wealth. This ratio highlights the much larger pool of wealthy individuals operating on Main Street compared to the limited number of high-profile CEOs featured in the Forbes 400.
The book also reveals that the Forbes 400 list receives a disproportionate amount of media coverage on wealth, accounting for only about 50% of all wealth news coverage, while actually representing just about 3% of total U.S. household wealth. In contrast, "Main Street Millionaires" - individuals worth over $25 million - hold more than 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400, accounting for roughly 40% of all household wealth in the United States.
Additionally, the data shows that nearly 5 million households have over $5 million in net worth, placing them in the top 4% of American wealth holders. Among these, 2 million are decamillionaires (worth over $10 million) and 65,000 are centimillionaires (worth over $100 million). The data also indicates that wealth is closely tied to business ownership, with nearly half of all Americans worth $5 million or more owning a private business.
At the $10 million and $100 million net worth thresholds, this figure jumps to three-quarters and virtually everyone, respectively.
The authors also discuss how private business owners tend to earn significantly more than public C-suite executives. In 2022, the top 9,000 public company C-suite executives earned a collective $38 billion, while the top 1% of private business owners - a group more than 10 times as large - earned $570 billion. This amounts to private owners earning 15 times as much as the average public CEO on an individual basis.
Other key data points from the book include the significant tax advantages of pass-through business structures, with 70 cents of every pass-through dollar going directly to the top 1% of income earners. The book also highlights the considerable amount of tax-free wealth transfers, with over $200 billion transferred tax-free every year.
Furthermore, the data shows that accumulating top-tier wealth takes decades of consistent reinvestment, with individuals needing to reach certain net worth milestones in their 20s, 40s, and 60s to join the ranks of the wealthiest 0.1% in their age group. Finally, the book notes the overrepresentation of wealthy individuals in Congress, with decamillionaires being 10 times more likely to hold political office compared to the general population, giving business interests significant sway over policy decisions.
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