(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is home to a working class sufferingfrom stagnant incomes and declining job prospects—widespreadstruggles that helped elect Republican Donald Trump. Therelative wealth of Americans in all age groups keeps falling,compared with previous decades.

At the same time, the country is also home to an unprecedentedamount of wealth, a divergence that has made income inequality ahousehold phrase. America has $55.6 trillion in privatefinancial assets and more millionaires than any other nation in theworld by far.

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Today, more than 8 million households have financial assetsof $1 million or more, not including homes or luxurygoods, according to Boston Consulting Group. From 2010 to 2015, thenumber of millionaires jumped by 2.4 million. Another 3.1 millionwill be created by 2020, BCG estimates, at the pace of 1,700 newAmerican millionaires every day.

But before your faith in upward mobility is restored, realizethis: The very oldest Americans hold a disproportionatechunk of all those trillions, and they’re handing it offto their already well-off kids in what is the largestgenerational transfer of wealth in history.

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Inheritance is an increasingly significant driver of wealthin America.

Wide swaths of the country live from month to month withvirtually no savings safety net. About three-quarters of thecountry are “strugglers,” unable to save anything from year toyear, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis concluded in a studylast year.

The other quarter of the country, however, are “thrivers,” theSt. Louis Fed said—people who successfully savemoney and accumulate wealth over the years. These include thetop 1 percent, who have steadily taken more and more of thenation’s economic output.

Most of these thrivers, however, are members of a flourishingupper-middle class.

To be upper-middle-class, according to Urban Institute scholar Stephen Rose’sclassification, a family of three must make at least $100,000 ayear and less than $350,000, while a family of three in the meremiddle class makes $50,000 to $100,000, and one in the lower-middleclass earns $30,000 to $50,000.

Rose made these distinctions to see how the fortunes of thesegroups have risen and fallen through the years, after adjusting forinflation.

It turns out that the number of upper-middle-class Americans hasballooned since 1979 while the other parts of the middle class wereshrinking.

Being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be. A net worth of $1million has the same buying power today that $341,000 did in 1980and that $45,000 did 100 years ago, according to Bureau ofLabor Statistics data.

If you’re making six figures and saving regularly, you shouldeventually end up with a million dollars or more in your investmentaccounts. (You’d better, since you’ll need to save that muchto have any hope of maintaining your lifestyle in retirement.)

These upper-middle-class millionaires are far moreprivileged than 90 percent of the country, but they rarelyfeel rich. They still need to borrow for a child’scollege education, with the average, four-year, private-collegetuition now at $33,480 a year, according to the College Board.

And as they get older, they need to worry about long-term-careexpenses: A private room in a nursing room now costs $7,700 amonth, according to Genworth Financial. This means that a long-termillness such as Alzheimer’s can bankrupt all but the wealthiestpeople.

No, the real wealth is now concentrated in the top2 percent of the population, among what Rose classifiesas rich Americans (those making $350,000 or more).

This tranche has grown even faster than the upper-middleclass over the past 35 years, according to his calculations.Some of these wealthy Americans are entrepreneurs, since inthis globalized world, the rewards for success can be huge,especially in fields such as technology and finance.

Others were just born lucky, as in: They inherited theircash.

More than half of U.S. investors with over $25 million saidinheritance was a factor in their wealth, according to a new surveyby Spectrem Group, a consulting firm that specializes in pollingthe rich. Among these people, a whopping 73 percent of those aged50 or younger said inheritance was a factor.

George Walper, Spectrem’s president, said there’s been an uptickin the last few years in the number of respondents who citeinheritance as a factor in their wealth.

To be fair, the very wealthy people surveyed by Spectrem alsocite hard work, education, and smart investing as playing a role intheir riches.

But it’s become harder to build a fortune on hard workalone. Americans in their late seventies, eighties, andnineties began their careers in the midst of the U.S.’spostwar boom. More recent generations haven’t had the same economictailwinds.

The median family today is significantly poorer at any given agethan their counterparts would have been 25 years earlier, accordingto the St. Louis Fed. For example, people born in 1970have had about 40 percent less wealth at any given age, comparedwith people born in 1940 . The median middle-aged family in 2013had 31 percent less wealth than its counterpart in 1989, while themedian young family had 28 percent less wealth than its 1989counterpart. Meanwhile, the median wealth gap between young and oldfamilies has widened.

As a result, the rich in the U.S. are an older crowd. It’s notnecessarily surprising for young people to be poorer than oldpeople. It takes a long time to develop valuable job skills—andeven longer to pay off mortgages and stash money in a 401(k).

The U.S., however, is unique in how much wealth is concentratedamong its oldest citizens.

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten nolonger,” Trump said in his victory speech on the night of theelection. But it’s not clear what the president-elect can or willdo to affect the distribution of wealth across Americansociety.

While candidate Trump made ringing appeals to working-classvoters, he also promised trillions of dollars in tax cuts, almosthalf aimed at the top 1 percent of U.S. by income.

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