This paper examines the wealth of successive birth cohorts using data from the 1989-2001 Surveys of Consumer Finances, with two central results. First, older households (aged 55-64, 65-74 or 75-84) in 2001 had more wealth than similarly aged households in 1989, but younger households did not....

Several U.S. panel surveys measure household wealth. At the same time, many important questions about household wealth accumulation remain somewhat unresolved. We consider whether measurement error on the existing suite of longitudinal surveys hinders their usefulness for addressing these...