You’ll need to earn close to $200,000 a year to be within the top 10% of U.S. household incomes, though the exact threshold depends on where you live.
A recent Visa analysis calculated the income and net worth households need to be considered “affluent” across the U.S., which the report defines as households in the top 10% in terms of either income or net worth. Visa based the thresholds on 2024 U.S. Census survey data.
Nationally, those thresholds are about $210,000 a year in income or a net worth of roughly $1.8 million. Net worth is a measure of a household’s total assets, including home equity, savings and investments, minus its debts.
Those thresholds have increased since 2020, when the income needed to reach the top 10% was about $170,000 and the wealth cutoff sat around $1.3 million nationally. Rising home values and stock prices have pushed both numbers higher, while wage growth added further momentum, the study says.
The analysis also looked at how these thresholds vary by region, using cost-of-living data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to account for local price differences. Here’s a look what it takes to be considered affluent in different parts of the country:
West: $227,000 income, $2 million net worthNortheast: $222,000 income, $1.9 million net worthSouth: $205,000 income, $1.8 million net worthMidwest: $198,000 income, $1.7 million net worth
The regional cutoffs reflect what households pay for housing, goods and everyday services in each area. Because the thresholds are scaled to local prices, regions where costs run higher require more income or net worth to be considered affluent, while lower-cost areas require less.
Housing plays an outsized role in these cost differences, since it makes up the largest share of household spending, the study says.
That lines up with the most recent regional data, which shows median existing-home prices ranging from about $319,500 in the Midwest to roughly $628,500 in the West as of October 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Wealth has grown in the U.S. since 2020
While Visa’s analysis does not include net-worth figures for each region in 2020, Federal Reserve data shows that the wealth held by the top 10% of all households has grown by about 40% over the last five years as asset prices have climbed.
Much of the rise in wealth comes from gains in the stock market and real estate. The top 10% of Americans hold over 87% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, with the value of those assets growing sharply since 2020, according to Federal Reserve data. The S&P 500 — a market benchmark that tracks around 500 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies — gained roughly 109% over the last five years.
Rising home values also contributed to higher household wealth. The U.S. median home price rose about 25% over that same period, per U.S. Census data.
The increase also reflects stronger income gains among higher-earning households. The threshold for households to be in the top 10% of earners rose 23% since 2020, Visa’s analysis shows.
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