To: Mongo2116 who wrote (1121392 ) 2/28/2019 10:25:05 PM From: puborectalis Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1578267 The median American family owns just over $80,000 in household wealth, while 15 family dynasties own a combined $618 billion.Income inequality in America is getting worse, and dynastic wealth, which has been bemoaned by Warren Buffett , may be one of the reasons why . The left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies' "Billionaire Bonanza" report examined the growing concentration of wealth in the US by looking at 15 dynastically wealthy families from the Forbes 400 list and data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finance. "Each of these family's wealth comes from companies started by an earlier generation, either a parent or more distant ancestor," the report said. "Each of them also represents a wealth dynasty passing generation to generation free from interruption." Read more: How the billionaire Koch brothers became 2 of the most influential political donors in America It found that the median American family owns just more than $80,000 in household wealth, while the 15 family dynasties own a combined $618 billion. Since 1982, the combined wealth of the top three families — the Waltons , the Kochs, and the Marses — increased by 5,868%, totaling $348.7 billion. Here's a closer look at how they and the rest of the wealthy dynastic families from the Forbes 400 built their wealth, ranked from lowest net worth to highest net worth. The estimated total wealth for each family is a sum of each individual family member's wealth listed on the Forbes 400 and does not include the wealth of any family members not on the Forbes 400. Note that the Forbes 400 doesn't encompass all of America's wealthy dynastic families — some individual family members have less than the $2.1 billion in personal wealth needed to make the list.