The numbers come first. Baby boomers now hold a net worth of nearly $90 trillion, according to Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni, or roughly 52% of all U.S. household wealth. The Silent Generation controls another $20 trillion, much of which will eventually flow to their boomer children.
Yardeni calls this the 'G-shaped economy' — a generational divide he argues better explains the resilience of consumer spending than the more familiar 'K-shaped' story of rich versus poor households. Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70% of U.S. GDP, and Yardeni says boomers are its real engine.
The generation controls about 54% of household stocks and mutual funds, worth close to $30 trillion, and owns 41% of all household real estate — more than any other generation. Boomers also hold around $3.1 trillion in money-market funds, about 60% of the household total, with the Silent Generation holding another 16%.
That asset base changes how interest rates work. For boomers sitting on cash and locked-in low mortgages, higher rates mean more interest income, not more borrowing cost. 'Rates are not simply a cost of borrowing,' Yardeni said. 'They are also a source of income and the reason that home prices are rising.'
Younger Americans face the opposite math. Millennials and Gen Zers who need mortgages are priced out by high rates, while boomers who already own homes outright — or refuse to give up ultralow legacy rates — stay put, tightening housing supply further and pushing prices higher still.
The AI boom is delivering gains across generations, with a handful of hyperscalers on pace to spend more than $1 trillion next year, lifting stocks in tech, infrastructure, energy and construction. But boomers are largely insulated from the labor-market disruption AI could bring, since their spending depends on accumulated wealth rather than wages or job security, Yardeni noted.
Boomers are not entirely cut off from their children's struggles. A Visa Business and Economic Insights report found a quarter of millennial homeowners received help from their parents on a down payment and could not have bought their current home without it. Visa said boomers are increasingly sharing wealth now rather than waiting for inheritance.
Still, the windfall many younger Americans expect may not materialize. The same report found boomers will pass on just $36 trillion of their $93 trillion in wealth, after subtracting debts, retirement spending, charitable giving, taxes and fees. Boomers, despite their wealth, still carry mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, margin loans against brokerage accounts, and business loans.
Capital rewards clear rules, and right now those rules favor the generation that already owns the assets. The lesson for policymakers is not to punish accumulated wealth but to remove the barriers — from constrained housing supply to a labor market slow to reward productivity — that keep younger Americans from building capital of their own. The market has already voted on who benefits when rates rise: savers and owners, not borrowers and renters. Fixing that gap requires more supply, more investment opportunity, and less reliance on redistribution schemes that treat the symptom instead of the cause.
