The Polarization of Personal Saving

The Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics have constructed the first complete distribution of personal saving (2004–2022) for the U.S. by estimating the joint distribution of disposable personal income and personal consumption expenditures. We start with household surveys, augmented with administrative sources, to correct for suspected underreporting in the distribution tails. We then scale household values to national accounts totals and calculate the resulting distribution of personal saving, extending existing distributional national accounts for the U.S. While aggregate saving is 3% of personal income in 2022, it is negative for the bottom half of the distribution. In fact, consumption expenditures are more than double income for the bottom 10%, but almost six times less than income for the top 1%. Despite a temporary increase in saving during the COVID pandemic, the polarization is large and persistent, and robust to modifying the definitions and sample composition.