In the week since President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, all eyes have been on the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Everything from her record as California's attorney general, to information about her father, Donald Harris, to even learning more about her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, potential voters are looking to learn more about Harris, who could very well become the first woman, Black woman, and South Asian woman to become president of the United States.
That includes voters wanting to learn more about Vice President Kamala Harris' net worth. Back in 2019, when she ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris said she had to back out of the crowded Democratic primary race "simply doesn't have the financial resources we need to continue."
"I'm not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign," she explained at the time. "And as the campaign has gone on, it's become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete."
At the time, according to Fortune, Harris was worth an estimated $6.3 million. Since then, her net worth has increased.
Currently, Harris' net worth stands at an estimated $8 million, according to Forbes. As vice president, Harris earns $218,000 per year. The reason for her net worth's increase, according to Forbes, is largely thanks to a multimillion-dollar home Harris shares with her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.
According to the same Forbes report, the home increased in value, from $1 million in 2021 to $4.4 million in 2024. Harris has also more than $500,000 from various book advances she received before entering the White House.
It goes without saying, but the nation's first female VP, first Black VP, and first VP of South Asian descent has worked hard for her money—so here's a breakdown of where Harris's significant wealth comes from.
How much money has Kamala Harris earned from her political career?
Kamala was elected as district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. According to Forbes, she made more than $140,000 that year, with her wages steadily increasing throughout her six years in the position, peaking at $202,000 in 2010. The job made her eligible for a pension worth at least $250,000 today, per Women's Health.
When Harris became California's attorney general in 2010, according to her tax returns previously obtained by The New York Times, she took a significant drop in pay from her previous job, earning just under $160,000 a year. Seven years later, when she took office as a U.S. Senator representing California, her pay increased by a slight amount, up to the $174,000 annual salary that's been paid to every Senator since their last pay raise in 2009.
When Harris was sworn in as vice president in January 2021, she started to receive a federally mandated salary of $235,100—quite the pay bump from her past political gigs. In addition, Harris is allowed to write off up to $100,000 for VP-related expenses, along with being housed for free at Number One Observatory Circle, the official vice presidential residence.
How much money has Kamala Harris earned from her books?
As a three-time author, Harris has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in book advances.
Harris published Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer in 2009 and a children's picture book called Superheroes Are Everywhere in 2019. That same year, she released her memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. According to her 2018 tax returns, she earned $320,125 from writing and publishing her memoir.
In 2019, Harris reported earning $277,763 from various book advances. Since then, her three books garnished more than $359,000 in 2020 and $456,000 in 2021 in royalties.
Harris has not written or released a new book since taking office, however, so her book-related revenue stream decreased to $80,000 in 2022 and $8,488 in 2023, according to her latest filing and as reported by Forbes.
If Harris does become the first woman president of the United States, more books are likely to come.
What are Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff's joint assets?
Harris married lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014. During their time together and before Harris became vice president of the United States, the couple were estimated to have earned a combined $8.2 million in total, with annual earnings remaining steady around the $2 million mark throughout their six years of joint filings.
Most of their income came from Emhoff’s work at law firms Venable and DLA Piper, according to Forbes. In 2018 alone, according to the tax return Harris released for that fiscal year, she and Emhoff reported a total of $1.9 million in adjusted gross income; they paid a tax rate of about 37% on their earnings that year, which was, interestingly, the highest tax rate paid by any of the 2020 Democratic candidates that year, per The New York Times.
But when Harris resumed the vice presidency in 2021, her husband announced he would leave his law firm (and his substantial salary) behind.
Instead, he became a member of Georgetown University's law school faculty, earning $200,000 a year. The move "significantly dropped" the couple's income, ABC News reports, from more than $3 million in 2019 to around $450,000 in 2023.
