AMERICA'S 25 RICHEST FAMILIES 2016 -BILLION DOLLAR CLANS

Great fortunes are notoriously easy to lose. Not so for the nation’s 25 richest clans, who’ve bucked the odds and held onto their wealth over generations, in some cases since the late 1800s. Collectively they are worth $722 billion this year, $11 billion less than the top 25 were a year ago.

Twelve of the 25 fortunes fell compared to a year ago, while 10 increased. Two were unchanged and one is new. To make the top 25 list, the net worth cutoff was $10.7 billion.

See the full list of 25 and the methodology below here:

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Rank	Name	Net Worth	Origin of Wealth
1	Walton family	$130  billion	Wal-Mart
2	Koch family	$82 billion	diversified
3	Mars family	$78 billion	candy
4	Cargill-MacMillan family	$49 billion	Cargill Inc.
5	Cox family	$41 billion	media
6	S.C. Johnson family	$30 billion	cleaning products
7	Pritzker family	$29 billion	hotels, investments
8	(Edward) Johnson family	$28.5 billion	money management
9	Hearst family	$28 billion	Hearst Corp.
10	Duncan family	$21.5 billion	pipelines
11	Newhouse family	$18.5 billion	magazines, cable TV
12	Lauder family	$17.9 billion	Estee Lauder
13	Dorrance family	$17.1  billion	Campbell Soup Co.
14	Ziff family	$14.4 billion	publishing
15	Du Pont family	$14.3 billion	DuPont (chemicals)
16	Hunt family	$13.7 billion	oil
17	Goldman family	$13.7 billion	real estate
18	Busch family	$13.4 billion	Anheuser-Busch
19	Sackler family	$13 billion	pain medicines
20	Brown family	$12.3  billion	liquor
21	Marshall family	$12 billion	diversified
22	Mellon family	$11.5 billion	banking
23	Butt family	$11 billion	supermarkets
24	Rockefeller family	$11 billion	oil
25	Gallo family	$10.7 billion	wine, liquor           (Forbes)