The Dow Jones industrial average is poised to hit a record high of 25,000 points this week, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes similarly reaching new heights. The indexes are widely used as a kind of shorthand for American economic health, appearing everywhere from nightly newscasts to President Trump’s tweets.
But for many, perhaps most, American households, those indexes measure an economy far removed from their own daily bread-and-butter concerns. One figure from a recent working paper by New York University economist Edward Wolff illustrates that point: Fewer than 14 percent of American households directly own stock in any company.
Even when you consider indirect ownership via 401(k) retirement accounts and similar vehicles, fewer than half of American households own any stock at all.
