The Myth of the Investor Middle Class

By Marie Cocco

A new study reveals the “ownership society’’ of conservative dreams for the fraud it is; do-it-yourself financing doesn’t work when the upper class owns 80% of the nation’s stock.

WASHINGTON—The “ownership society’’ looks like this: The owners are doing quite well, thank you.

Wealth—the value of assets such as houses, stocks and cash that an individual holds, after debts are subtracted—has become more concentrated over the past four decades, and more intensely so since 1998. Middle-income families who, in contemporary political mythology, are socking away money in mutual funds and soon will see their net worth rise with their stocks are, in truth, holding a steadily shrinking proportion of the nation’s wealth.