Content overview: “Private Business Fortunes: The Overlooked Source of Wealth and Inequality in America”. While much of the public discourse on wealth inequality focuses on billionaires, economists Eric Zwick and Owen Zidar point to a far larger but less visible group: the owners of private businesses. These entrepreneurs, whose companies are not publicly traded, hold significant wealth that often goes unmeasured in standard economic data. Zwick and Zidar argue that this sector may be even more crucial than billionaires in understanding and addressing America's wealth gap.
Their research suggests that private business owners—numbering in the millions—collectively control a substantial share of the nation's assets, yet their economic impact is frequently overlooked by policymakers and the public. By shining a light on this hidden cohort, the economists aim to reframe the inequality debate and highlight new levers for promoting broader prosperity. The full version stays on the original page, which this listing opens directly.