美國家庭財富嚴重縮水 10年銳減三分之一

Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.

The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according toa study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially.

The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile. (For households at that level, 95 percent of the population had less wealth.) It found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth increased14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth for the richest 1 percent of households.

For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even earlier.

“The housing bubble basically hid a trend of declining financial wealth at the median that began in 2001,” said Fabian T. Pfeffer, the University of Michigan professor who is lead author of the Russell Sage Foundation study.

The reasons for these declines are complex and controversial, but one point seems clear: When only a few people are winning and more than half the population is losing, surely something is amiss.《紐約時報》報道，美國的貧富差距問題一直以來都受到廣泛地關注。但這個問題不僅僅關乎富人更富，也與典型的美國家庭變得更貧困有關。

羅素·賽奇基金會資助的一項調查顯示，經濟通貨膨脹調整後，2003年典型美國家庭的收入淨值爲87,992美元。十年過後，這個收入則僅有56,335美元，足足減少36%。這些是處在財富分配中層的家庭的收入數據，這個標準也意味着有相同比例的家庭的收入高於或低於這個水準。然而與此同時，富裕家庭的淨收入實際上是在增加的。

這項研究也分析了淨收入處在95%以上的家庭（對於這個層次的家庭，95%的人口都稍顯貧窮）。研究發現，對於人口中很富裕的這部分人來說，在相同的十年裏，他們的家庭淨收入則增長了14%。其他調查則顯示最富裕的1%家庭財富增長甚至更快。

對於中產階級家庭，從最近的2007年經濟衰退開始，更大的損失開始顯現。在此之前，儘管增速不如富裕層次家庭，典型家庭的淨收入也在緩慢地增長。但是典型家庭的大部分收入來自於他們房產價值的增加。如排除房產因素，中產階級收入在更早時就進入了衰退期。

研究報告作者密歇根大學教授費邊 T·普費弗表示，房地產泡沫掩蓋了自2001年以來中產階級財富縮水的趨勢，影響這些衰退的原因既複雜，又充滿爭議，但是有一點是清楚的：只有少數人在獲利，半數以上的人都在失利，“一定有什麼地方不對”。