
Assistant Professor of Finance
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Email: ssalgado [at] wharton.upenn.edu
DATA: The Global Repository of Income Dynamics (GRID)
FIRST DRAFT: Why are the Wealthiest so Wealthy? A Longitudinal Empirical Investigation (March 2023)
We follow the 50-year-old top 0.1% wealth owners over 22 years and decompose their excess wealth relative to the median-wealth household into different factors (panel a). Panel b shows the same decomposition for the New Money households, who start their working lives below median wealth and join the top 0.1% group by age 50. Y-axis in multiples of the economy-wide average wealth (AW).