Wealth and all of its subcomponents are reported here in 2018 dollars using the personal consumption expenditures price index from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (see table 1.1.4, which is available at https://www.bea.gov). Wealth is defined as the sum of assets, including financial and nonfinancial assets, net of liabilities, including mortgages, consumer debt, and other liabilities.
7 Income groups at each point in time are defined here using current household income. Specific households may move across income groups over time. Since households in the high-income group during their working years may, in retirement, move to low- or middle-income groups, some of the wealth assigned to low- or middle-income groups in this analysis comes from households with high lifetime income.