This report analyses the evolution of household wealth in Spain between 2002 and 2022, using microdata from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (EFF) conducted by the Bank of Spain. The study examines the aggregate dynamics of net wealth, its composition in real and financial assets, the distribution of wealth across percentiles, and its evolution by age and birth cohort. The results show a significant increase in average wealth over the period, interrupted by the 2008 and 2020 crises, along with a growing concentration of wealth among households at the top of the distribution. The analysis also reveals an increasingly pronounced generational divide. Cohorts born between 1956 and 1975 have consolidated high levels of wealth in a more favourable economic context, whereas millennials exhibit weaker wealth trajectories, lower access to homeownership, and less asset accumulation. This divergence poses significant challenges for intergenerational equity and the design of public policies in the areas of housing, saving, and wealth redistribution.

In Spain, economic well-being inequalities are among the highest in the European Union, and this lack of social cohesion negatively affects quality of life. Well-being is determined not only by income and wealth, but also by how people perceive risks and uncertainties about the future. Economic insecurity—understood as the concern about future economic problems and the inability to cope with them due to a lack of resources—emerges as a threat to social cohesion, affecting health, life decisions, and financial expectations. As our colleagues explain in this article, these findings highlight the pressing need to address insecurity as a broader social challenge.

This paper presents the first systematic analysis of regional wealth inequality in Spain. We do so by combining administrative fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts between 2016 and 2022. We document substantial regional disparities in both average household wealth and its concentration. Madrid stands out as the region with the highest average wealth and top 1% wealth share. Our findings are relevant in the Spanish institutional context, where autonomous communities exercise considerable control over wealth taxation and public expenditure.