Reality Check on Gloomy Net Worth Numbers

You saw the startling headline from the Federal Reserve, that the median net worth of U.S. households is now back at 1992 levels, with almost two decades of accumulated prosperity vaporized. Ok, the reality check has clearly bounced here. The doom and gloom media is not telling you the whole story behind these surveys. The Fed does this survey every three years. It surveyed 4,421 households in 2007, then 6,492 households in 2010, whereby Americans voluntarily answer questions about their net worth, meaning, their house values, bank accounts and retirement accounts. And self-reporting is key here -- Americans are notoriously downbeat lately. Plus they don't like staying in interviews for more than, say, a half hour to give the data to NORC, a research organization at the University of Chicago that does the survey for the Fed. Read the rest of this article

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