Earlier this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit twenty-thousand points — the first time the famed stock market index has reached that level since its inception in 1896. The twenty-thousand-point landmark is arbitrary and meaningless, but it does provide an occasion to reflect upon who owns the stock market and thus who benefits when it performs well.

Of course, families are not the only ones who own stocks. Foundations, endowments, and pension funds also typically invest in the stock market, at least in part. But the benefits that flow to these entities from a run-up in stock value only trickle down to ordinary people in certain idiosyncratic cases, such as when a defined-benefit pension fund might otherwise become distressed or insolvent.