  In a recent paper in this journal [J. Stat. Mech. (2009) P02037] we proposed
a new, physically motivated, distribution function for modeling individual
incomes having its roots in the framework of the k-generalized statistical
mechanics. The performance of the k-generalized distribution was checked
against real data on personal income for the United States in 2003. In this
paper we extend our previous model so as to be able to account for the
distribution of wealth. Probabilistic functions and inequality measures of this
generalized model for wealth distribution are obtained in closed form. In order
to check the validity of the proposed model, we analyze the U.S. household
wealth distributions from 1984 to 2009 and conclude an excellent agreement with
the data that is superior to any other model already known in the literature.
