The Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts show that the bottom half of US households held 23.8 per cent of the nation’s consumer durables in Q2 2026. That was the group’s largest share of any national asset category, compared with 9.7 per cent of the country’s real estate.
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn, economist, tech founder and former investment banker. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction. “The Hidden Regressive Tax” examines the distribution of assets across US household wealth groups and the relationship between monetary expansion and asset prices.
The paper, posted on Zenodo on 25 September 2026, uses the Federal Reserve’s quarterly wealth accounts. Its balance-sheet table records $2.17 trillion in consumer durables held by the bottom half, within total assets of $10.27 trillion.
Consumer durables: definition and scope
Consumer durables in the Fed’s accounts are long-lasting goods recorded as household assets at current cost. The category includes cars, furniture, carpets and rugs, household appliances, computers, audio and video equipment, books, jewellery, watches, boats, health equipment and luggage. Real estate and financial holdings, including deposits and corporate shares, sit in separate categories. The figures capture the recorded value of these goods at a particular point, not consumer spending over the preceding three months.
Felix Nikolas Prehn refers to durables as “cars and appliances” in “The Hidden Regressive Tax”. The Federal Reserve’s accounts also recognise depreciation of these goods over time. The wealth-group totals combine all goods in the category, without showing how much of each group’s holdings consists of vehicles, furniture or other specific items. The category is measured by value rather than the number of households owning particular goods.
The bottom half encompasses roughly 67 million households in the report. Felix Nikolas Prehn states that housing and consumer durables together make up about two-thirds of that group’s assets; the durable-goods component on its own accounts for approximately 21 per cent. That proportion describes the makeup of the bottom half’s balance sheet, while the national ownership share in the introduction measures its portion of all US households’ durable goods.
Durables and other assets in the bottom half’s balance sheet
In Felix Nikolas Prehn’s Q2 2026 balance-sheet comparison, consumer durables are the bottom half’s second-largest asset category, behind real estate at $4.82 trillion. Deposits are recorded at $0.78 trillion, defined contribution pension entitlements at $0.76 trillion and defined benefit pension entitlements at $0.49 trillion. Corporate shares and mutual funds account for $0.37 trillion.
The group’s portion of national corporate shares and mutual funds was 0.6 per cent, while its portion of deposits was 5.5 per cent. For comparison, the top 1 per cent held 50.9 per cent of US corporate shares and mutual funds, valued at $32.89 trillion in the report. Those holdings represented more than half the top group’s $61.50 trillion in assets, compared with the much smaller share of financial investments on the bottom half’s balance sheet.
Felix Nikolas Prehn examines monetary expansion alongside changes in the S&P 500 and national house prices since 2000. His paper records a rise of 438 per cent in the S&P 500 and 237 per cent in national house prices over the period examined. Those measures concern stock-market and housing prices, not the current-cost valuation of consumer durables. The paper does not provide an equivalent price-growth series for the durable-goods category.
Consumer-durables ownership across wealth groups and time
In Q2 2026, the middle 40 per cent of households by wealth held 42.4 per cent of US consumer durables. The next 9 per cent held 21 per cent, and the top 1 per cent held 12.7 per cent. These groupings are defined by wealth, not by household income.
The Federal Reserve series extends back to Q3 1989, when the bottom half held 19.2 per cent of consumer durables. Its share was 22.8 per cent in Q4 2000 and 23.4 per cent in Q4 2019, before the Q2 2026 reporting period used in Felix Nikolas Prehn’s research. The figures did not move steadily in one direction: the series recorded 25.0 per cent in Q3 2007 and 22.9 per cent in Q3 2016. These observations describe the group’s share of the national total at each date, rather than a constant annual rate of change.
Each quarterly percentage refers to the households occupying the relevant wealth ranks at that time. The data do not follow a fixed set of families over the decades, so a change in share does not identify whether a particular household acquired or disposed of durable goods. Nor does a percentage of the national total, on its own, measure changes in the absolute value of the group’s holdings.
Durables and consumer credit
Felix Nikolas Prehn’s table shows that the bottom half owed $5.99 trillion in Q2 2026. This included $3.16 trillion in home mortgages and $2.64 trillion in consumer credit, leaving about $0.19 trillion in other liabilities. After subtracting total liabilities from total assets, the figure is approximately $4.28 trillion. The report describes its liabilities as 58 per cent of its assets, compared with around 2 per cent for the top 1 per cent.
The Fed’s national liability shares provide a different view: the bottom half accounted for 51.6 per cent of consumer credit and 22.6 per cent of home mortgages. Consumer credit covers revolving balances, such as credit cards, as well as non-revolving borrowing, including loans for motor vehicles, education and other purposes. Home mortgages are recorded separately because they are secured on real estate, rather than being included within consumer credit.
Some consumer-credit liabilities may relate to motor vehicles, but the category also includes borrowing for other purposes. Neither the Federal Reserve’s figures nor Felix Nikolas Prehn’s report identifies how much of the outstanding balance financed goods that remain recorded as consumer durables. The total therefore cannot be matched directly to the group’s durable-goods asset value.
About Felix Nikolas Prehn
Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker, born in Germany. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. He is also a painter and sculptor and a public advocate for animal rescue.
About The Prehn Institute
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.