Young and wealthy: Where does Europe’s youth hold the most net wealth?

Young Europeans face a tough financial reality. High rents, expensive housing and rising living costs make it harder for many people under the age of 35 to save, invest or buy their first home.

In some countries, stronger wages, affordable housing or family support help younger households accumulate wealth sooner. In others, limited job opportunities and heavy housing costs leave many with little more than modest savings.

So where are Europe’s wealthiest young people? And how much wealth do 16 to 34 year-olds hold?

The median net wealth of people aged 16 to 34 in the euro area is €24,600, according to the European Central Bank’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), published in mid-2026. This is just 18% of the overall median net wealth of €140,100.

Median net wealth ranges from €5,700 in Finland to €257,500 in Malta among 22 European countries with available data.

“For young adults, wealth differences are especially revealing because people aged 16 to 34 have usually not had much time to accumulate substantial assets from their own labour income,” Prof Fabian Pfeffer from LMU Munich and founding director of the Munich International Stone Center for Inequality Research, told Euronews Business.

“So when we see large wealth holdings among young households, we should be cautious about interpreting them as the result of individual saving discipline alone.”

Apart from the clear outlier Malta, net wealth among 16 to 34 year-olds exceeds €100,000 only in Luxembourg (€135,000). Belgium ranks third, very close to that level at about €97,200.

High wealth despite low earnings

Croatia follows at €82,000. This is surprisingly high given its position in net annual earnings rankings. Annual net earnings for a single person without children stood at €17,256 in Croatia in 2025 according to Eurostat.

This covers the national average, not just 16 to 34 year-olds.

The median net wealth among 16 to 34 year-olds is also high in Slovakia (€74,600), Estonia (€62,200), Czechia (€59,900) and Lithuania (€59,600), despite annual net earnings in these countries being well below the EU average.

Young Italians are three times wealthier than young Germans

Among the EU’s four largest economies, the median net wealth of 16 to 34 year-olds is highest in Italy at €53,500. This is significantly higher than France (€27,700) and Spain (€23,700). Under-35s hold the lowest net wealth in Germany at just €17,600. That means young Italians hold three times the wealth of their German peers.

Finland and Greece at the bottom

Greece (€9,900) follows Finland (€5,700) at the lower end. Austria (€13,400) and Latvia (€16,900) also remain below Germany (€17,600), the fifth lowest overall.

The median net wealth of 16 to 34 year-olds stands at €23,900 in Ireland, €36,200 in Portugal, €36,300 in Hungary and €40,900 in the Netherlands.

Family and institutions drive the differences

Pfeffer emphasised that early wealth often tells us less about what young adults have already earned and more about the structures around them. These include access to housing, mortgage credit, family support, gifts, inheritances and debt.

“At this age, high private wealth is often not only an individual achievement story. It is also a family story and an institutional story,” he said.

Fabian Pfeffer noted that early homeownership is often the moment when young adults move from having some savings to becoming real wealth holders. However, getting onto the housing ladder usually requires more than discipline and a good spreadsheet.

“It requires access to credit, stable income, affordable prices and, very often, parents who can help with a down payment or transfer property directly. This is where family wealth becomes a quiet but powerful sorting mechanism.” he said.

Wealth transfers is reproduced much earlier

Pfeffer underlined that at young ages, substantial wealth is very often connected to parental resources. Of course, young adults can and do save from their own earnings. But there are limits to how much wealth can realistically be accumulated by age 30 purely through wages, especially in expensive housing markets.

He stated that wealth transfers allow some young adults to start adult life several steps ahead, sometimes with a downpayment for a mortgage, sometimes with an inherited apartment, sometimes simply with the security of knowing that family help is available if needed.

“That means wealth inequality is not only reproduced at the moment of inheritance late in life. It is reproduced much earlier, when young adults leave home, study, start work, form families or try to buy housing,” he said.