Top-end wealth is a job you own, not a portfolio you hold

Smith, Yagan, Zidar and Zwick used the death and retirement of business owners as a natural experiment and found that roughly 75% of pass-through profit flowing to top earners is attributable to owner human capital. Firm profits fall sharply when the owner stops working. Fewer than 13% of the top 0.1% live primarily on interest and rents; over 70% are under 60 and running mid-sized firms — professional services, auto dealerships, beverage distribution.

Current composition confirms it. Fed data puts the top 0.1% at 49% public equities, 20% private business, 9% real estate. The bottom 50% is 49% real estate and 5% equities. The asset that separates them is the private company, and it is not passive. contested The Fed's noncorporate-business series for the top 0.1% has not been updated past Q3 2024, so any 2026 figure for that share is an estimate.