No, I just formed a poor sentence. My sibling said it better.
The reason they don't segment by age is that at the wealth scale we're discussing, the amount accumulated in an average person's life is irrelevant. It's called a 'class' for a reason; mobility is difficult. It's not like "I got a raise, and now I'm significantly ahead." The top 1% is an income of over $350k/year. A lawyer making $150k is just outside of the 5% range.
I looked over the numbers on Wikipedia before making my post. In that case we were slightly talking around each other, because you were talking about net worth, and I was talking about income, but the principle is the same. Here's the numbers on net worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#cit...
In 2004, which seems to be the newest data that I could find (and the one this article uses), the median net worth for a household with the head's age under 35 is $14.2k. By 55-64, that rises to $248.7, which is your point.
My point is that the difference between $14k and $248k isn't enough to move you up into the upper echelon of wealth. From that article:
> This data shows that the top 25% of American society holds on average a net wealth of $1,556,801 which is 33 times more than those of the lower middle class, or the 25th-50th percentile
So your average 65 year old is _still_ far from being in the upper quartile.
My point was that if you age adjust the numbers you no longer have the top 20% owning 90% of everything, you have the top 20% owning around 50% of everything, which is a lot less shocking.
Age adjusting these numbers takes it from "oh my god we live in an oligarchy!" to "meh, that's not so bad."
edit: I quickly glanced at the wikipedia article, I couldn't easily find any age vs. net worth numbers. I got my numbers from the Federal Reserve Consumer Finances Survey (it was titled something like that...)
That's where the wikipedia numbers come from. If you look at the 'distribution of wealth' heading, skip to the graph, and go to the big giant table, you'll see them.
And we're apparently just going to have to disagree, unless you can find some numbers and scale them yourself. I'm still not sure how age is a significant differentiator, and on top of that, it doesn't matter if the people who own everything are old or not. They still own everything.
The reason they don't segment by age is that at the wealth scale we're discussing, the amount accumulated in an average person's life is irrelevant. It's called a 'class' for a reason; mobility is difficult. It's not like "I got a raise, and now I'm significantly ahead." The top 1% is an income of over $350k/year. A lawyer making $150k is just outside of the 5% range.