That's a myth perpetuated by a (possibly willful) misinterpretation of the survey results[1][2]. If you click on the report in your own link, the survey summar

That's a myth perpetuated by a (possibly willful) misinterpretation of the survey results[1][2]. If you click on the report in your own link, the survey summary even says as much: "If faced with an unexpected expense of $400, 61 percent of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement—a modest improvement from the prior year. Similar to the prior year, 27 percent would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12 percent would not be able to cover the expense at all." In the study, the Fed asks respondents whether they are able to pay all of their bills in full. Only 17% say they can’t pay some bills. The Fed also asks respondents how a $400 emergency expense that they had to pay would affect their ability to pay their other bills. 85% percent report that they would still be able to pay all their bills. Only 14% say that the emergency expense would result in their not being able to pay some bills. The situation is bad for that 14%, but that figure is much closer to what you would expect in a normal distribution, unlike the sensationalist 40% figure that makes the rounds. Also, these kinds of surveys capture a point in time, and don't reflect changing affluence of an individual over the course of their life. One study[3] of historic income tax returns found that 40% of working Americans spend at least 2 years in the top 10%. A full 62% spend at least 2 years in the top 20%, and over 54% spend at least 3 years there[4]. If this comes as a surprise, one can sanity check this by comparing the median household income (after taxes, transfers, and benefits) in the US with those of other countries; the US is #1[5]. And NB: even for those that are destitute, the US has a huge safety net, where the poorest fifth of American working age households are better off than those in Canada, Denmark, Britain, and Germany because their market income is higher and their taxes are lower, after accounting for all monetary benefits[6]. That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement (people still slip through the cracks), but it's by no means as dire as many make it out to be. Given all this, it takes a lot of motivated reasoning to be able to argue that "more than half of the families in the US are destitute". [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-400-emergency-expense-story-is-wrong https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-40... [2] https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-400-emergency-expense-0 https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-4... [3] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0116370 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn... [4] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0116370.t002 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371%... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... [6] https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1489702016561602568 https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1489702016561602568