As you might guess, almost all of this large swing is attributable to the recent boom and bust in the stock market. The aggregate value of U.S. equities, which approximately equaled household disposable income at the end of 1994, reached 2.5 times disposable income at the beginning of 2000, but then it fell back to 1.3 times disposable income by the end of 2002.
Most of us have heard the wry joke that our 401(k)s are now 201(k)s!