Top 1 Percent Is Even Richer Than Surveys Say, ECB Paper Finds

The oft-cited line that the top 1 percent of U.S. households lay claim to 30 percent of all wealth is probably an understatement, according to a European Central Bank working paper.

Incorporating “missed” data on rich households pushes the share of wealth held by top earners up to between 35 percent and 37 percent, wrote Philip Vermeulen, a senior economist at the ECB. That’s higher than the 34 percent suggested by the 2010 U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances data from the Federal Reserve.