USA Today: Generation gap? About $200,000
Prashant Tungare arrived in the USA in 1984 with a wife, a child and $500 in his pocket. Today, the India-born American citizen is a prosperous computer specialist at Wachovia Bank.
"I've lived the American dream," says Prashant, 55. He owns a 3,000-square-foot house in Charlotte and has enough money to retire, but loves his job too much to quit.
Tungare is part of the wealthiest generation in American history — a group of 67 million people 55 and older who are so affluent that the gap between them and younger people increasingly is making the USA a nation of haves and haves-much-less.
The growing divide between the rich and poor in America is more generation gap than class conflict, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal government data. The rich are getting richer, but what's received little attention is who these rich people are. Overwhelmingly, they're older folks.
Nearly all additional wealth created in the USA since 1989 has gone to people 55 and older, according to Federal Reserve data. Wealth has doubled since 1989 in households headed by older Americans. …
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