Not just that, but educational attainment in general, demographic changes, economic changes etc. We've shifted from a population that does not die old, starts

Not just that, but educational attainment in general, demographic changes, economic changes etc. We've shifted from a population that does not die old, starts working early, stops education early, and does most of its work in the primary/secondary (agri/manufacturing) economy where its most productive when young. To automating those jobs and shifting to a world where we grow old, stay in school longer, have high returns on education in our tertiary service-based economic productivity levels, which gets us to be most productive in middle age, which also coincides with most of our investments in personal housing equity, retirement funds and paying down debt. Not a huge surprise that if you take a few age cohorts, that a young one will drop in wealth, while an older one will grow in wealth. Our society lives and works longer, and prepares longer for this work in school, which has more individual-benefits and thus higher individual educational debts at a young age. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if the wealth-hump didn't just move over a few years. Losing 1/3rd wealth within a certain age cohort (18-35) would be no surprise if half the wealth of 18-35 year olds was generated at 32-35, and this shifted to 35-38. I'd be most interested in seeing a graphical wealth distribution by age, for different generations, then you'd know if this was a story of decline, or a story of shifting the 'prime productivity' age by a few years. That having been said, my post was mostly on a 100-year historic scale. Things haven't changed quite as much since 1996, but I think it's still mostly linked to the same forces.