Stats › Active, passive and flows › Stock ownership
Who owns stocks in America
How many people actually own shares? It sounds like a simple question and the headline answer for the United States is 62%. Nearly two in three adults. Left there, it suggests a country where owning a piece of the market is just a normal part of life, roughly evenly spread.
It isn't, and that's what this page is really about. Underneath the 62% sits an income split so wide it makes the headline close to meaningless on its own: near universal ownership at the top and a minority position at the bottom. The same splits run through education, age and race, and most of them turn out to be the income gap wearing a different hat. The page also covers what the survey counts as ownership, which matters a lot, and the long decline and recovery in the headline number since the financial crisis.
I wanted this here because the ownership figure gets used as evidence in arguments about markets and inequality, usually by people quoting only the top line. The detail is more interesting than the headline and it points in a slightly different direction. It's one pollster's survey behind all of it, named and linked at the bottom with the sample periods stated. Have a look at their methodology before you carry any of these numbers into an argument.
62% of Americans owned stock in 2025, matching the highest readings on record from 2001 to 2007 and up from a low of 52% in 2013 and 2016. The headline hides an enormous split. 87% of households earning $100,000 or more own stock against 28% of those earning under $50,000. By education the gap is 84% for college graduates against 42% for high school or less. Ownership is close to universal at the top of the income distribution and a minority position at the bottom.
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