📈 How Corporate Equities Have Grown in U.S. Household Assets (1960-2024)

Corporate Equities as a Percentage of U.S. Household and Nonprofit Organizations Assets

After the strong U.S. stock bull markets of the 1950s and 1960s, corporate equities made up 21% of household and nonprofit organization assets by 1968. However, economic instability, geopolitical shocks, the oil crisis, and stagflation in the 1970s caused the U.S. stock market to experience a "lost decade" in the 1980s, with the corporate equities share of household assets falling to about 8%.

In the 1990s, the share began to grow again, reaching 26% in 2000 due to the dot-com bubble. Following the market collapse, this share dropped below 15% in 2003. After a partial recovery above 20%, the global financial crisis caused another decline, with the share falling to just 12% in 2009.

Corporate equities as a share of household assets started to rise again in the 2010s, reaching approximately 25% by 2018. By the second quarter of 2024, the ratio climbed to 28%, driven primarily by the tech stock bull market.