Research published in October 2025 by the Resolution Foundation, an independent British think tank focused on living standards, reveals a stark reality about wealth mobility: the average British worker would need to save every penny of their earnings for 52 years—without paying a single bill—to accumulate the £1.3 million ($1.7 million) required to join the wealthiest 10% of the population.

The findings underscore how entrenched wealth inequality has become, with even a lifetime of disciplined saving insufficient to close the gap for typical employees. Data from the Office for National Statistics has consistently shown that the top 10% of UK households hold roughly half of the country's total wealth, a concentration that the Resolution Foundation's analysis suggests has deepened rather than eased over time.

"Wealth gaps in Britain are now so large that a typical full-time employee saving all their earnings across their entire working life would still not be able to reach the top of the wealth ladder," wrote Molly Broome, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation and lead author of the report. The Resolution Foundation's press release outlines the full scope of the findings.

Broome noted that wealth mobility in Britain remains persistently low. "People that start life wealthy tend to stay wealthy, and vice versa," she added.

Passive Gains Drive Widening Inequality

According to the report, the primary engine behind growing inequality has been what the Foundation terms "passive" gains—wealth generated through property ownership and investment appreciation rather than earned income. Those who already held assets such as real estate have watched their net worth surge since 2010, leaving wage earners further behind regardless of their saving habits. This period coincided with more than a decade of historically low Bank of England interest rates, which pushed up asset prices—particularly housing—while doing comparatively little for wage growth.

U.S. Workers Face an Even Steeper Climb

The challenge is not confined to Britain. In the United States, the threshold for feeling wealthy has also risen. Americans now say they would need at least $2.3 million to consider themselves rich—an increase of $100,000 compared with two years prior, according to survey data from Bankrate.

Separate research indicates that achieving the traditional markers of the American Dream—a suburban home, two children, an annual vacation, and a new car—now requires approximately $4.4 million. Investopedia, which conducted that analysis, calculated that reaching those milestones would cost over $1 million more than the typical American will earn in an entire lifetime.

With median weekly earnings for full-time U.S. workers standing at $1,251, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accumulating $2.3 million would demand more than 35 years of full-time work—again, assuming zero living expenses. Even then, the total would fall $2.1 million short of the $4.4 million needed for the American Dream.

Reaching that higher benchmark would take the average American worker nearly 70 years of saving every dollar earned, with no expenditures whatsoever—a span exceeding most people's entire working careers. These figures do not account for inflation, unforeseen financial shocks, or the potential disruption of employment by automation and artificial intelligence.

The transatlantic picture paints a sobering conclusion: as inflation compresses purchasing power and labor markets face mounting pressures, the financial milestones associated with prosperity and economic security are receding ever further from reach for ordinary workers. The findings arrive amid renewed political debate in both countries over how best to address wealth concentration, including discussions around capital gains taxation in the UK under the Labour government and scrutiny of tax treatment for investment income versus wages in the U.S.

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on December 23, 2025.