Kamala Harris is an honorary member of Gen X. Here’s how her finances compare to others of that generation
The vice president appeals to younger voters turned off by the baby-boomer-ification of American politics.
Though her birth in October 1964 technically makes her a baby boomer, Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was born on the cusp of Gen X, just a few months before from the start of the generation which is typically defined as including those born between 1965 and 1980. Around two decades younger than both President Joe Biden and Republican nominee Donald Trump, she represents a clear generational shift in politics, and is being embraced by Gen Xers who have never had representation in the Oval Office before.
Her and husband Doug Emhoff’s finances, revealed in disclosure forms released by the White House over the past few years, are reflective of their position on the tail end of the baby boom.
Take their retirement savings: Harris has a pension via her work for the government; as one of the youngest baby boomers, this isn’t an anomaly. That said, Harris’s age puts her smack in the middle of when the first modern workers moved away from guaranteed pensions to fund their retirements and toward defined contribution plans like 401(k)s and IRAs. Gen X is the first generation to largely bear the full brunt of saving on their own (some experts call them the “401(k) experiment” generation), and the shift hasn’t worked out terribly well for them: A recent study that looked at young boomers born between 1959 and 1964 found that 52% have total assets of less than $250,000.
According to her financial disclosure forms, the vice president and Emhoff—who was also born in October 1964—are in a substantially better position. The couple’s net worth is between $3.6 million and around $7.40 million, excluding real estate, according to an analysis from the Wall Street Journal. Most of Harris’s assets are held in retirement accounts that are invested in index funds; she and her husband also hold at least $850,000 but potentially closer to $2 million in cash (the financial disclosure forms reveal a range of assets, not an exact amount).
Harris and her husband are also homeowners, which is common among Gen Xers (72% own a home). They have a 2.625% mortgage rate, according to their financial disclosure forms, which is well below the generation’s average 4% rate. That said, the mortgage was taken out in 2020, when the average 30-year fixed rate was 3.38%; like many other Americans, the couple took advantage of the historically low rates of the time. Their home value is estimated between $1 million and $5 million, and they have a seven-year adjustable-rate mortgage, which is also unusual. That means in a couple of years their interest rate could increase, although it is possible they could refinance to keep the lower rate, which they have already done once.
Their mortgage is their only listed debt, which is also out of the norm for Gen Xers. According to the Federal Reserve, Gen Xers hold about 36.6% of debt in the U.S., though they make up less than 20% of the population. They also carry the most credit card debt of any generation, according to a recent survey, and tend to have more student-loan debt than the generations before them (though less than millennials).
Harris and Emhoff reported $450,299 in income in 2023, according to tax returns released by the White House earlier this year. That includes Harris’s $218,784 salary as vice president, and Emhoff’s $174,994 wages as a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. They also made around $6,000 from book royalties and over $50,600 in taxable interest. The average Gen X household made $126,892 in income in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The income is a notable drop from their 2020 income, which totaled over $1.65 million. Emhoff earned $582,543 that year as a lawyer; he left his firms when Harris was sworn in as vice president.
Finances aside, Harris is representative of her position on the cusp between generations in other ways. For one, she could also be the first woman president, as well as the first Asian American president. She exemplifies the fact that younger boomers form a much more diverse group than older boomers. Gen X is even more so: Not only is it far more racially diverse than the generations before, but it’s the first to see a nearly equitable labor force participation rate between men and women.
