Generation Rich? Shhh!

Jon Burkhart was born during the Great Depression, and like many members of his generation, he couldn’t have been luckier. For most of their working lives, he and his wife saved 10 percent of everything they earned. They made some smart investments, but they also rode the postwar economy perfectly. After a 30-year career as a television producer and director in Houston, Burkhart moved in 1987 to Maui, where he and his wife bought a house. They sold it for a 300 percent profit in 2008, and invested most of the money in mutual funds just as the stock market was nearing a 13-year low. Today the 81-year-old Burkhart—in a retirement community in Winston-Salem, N.C.—lives far more comfortably than the elderly folks he knew as a child. “It was the most fortunate timing you could imagine,” he says. “There’s no way you can plan on that.”

For most Americans, the economic recovery has been marked by stagnant wages, high unemployment, and declining wealth. According to Federal Reserve data, the median U.S. household had a net worth of only $81,200 in 2013, down from $115,000 in 2004. But there’s one group that’s doing better than ever: old people. Historically one of the poorest age cohorts in the country, elderly Americans are now among the wealthiest. As of 2013 people 75 and older had a median family net worth of almost $195,000 in constant 2013 dollars, up from $131,000 in 1989, Federal Reserve data show.