Another interesting finding is that if we expand the definition of wealth to include estimates of Social Security and pension wealth, the distribution among U.S. households becomes much more even.2 This finding suggests that, in addition to factors influencing private wealth accumulation, the evolution of institutional arrangements for saving that has taken place over the last two decades may have played an important role in affecting changes in the distribution of wealth over time.
What about the effect of the recent rise in stock and bond market values? The typical view is that the growth in mutual funds and other financial investment avenues has allowed individuals further down in the wealth distribution to take advantage of the strength in equity markets.