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Discussion Paper
A Wealthless Recovery? Asset Ownership and the Uneven Recovery from the Great Recession
Data from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances indicate that although total household wealth has fully recovered from the Great Recession, there has been only modest growth for the vast majority of families since 2010, and most families have not recovered to pre-recession wealth levels. This uneven recovery is explained by declines in home and stock ownership, which have shown little signs of reversing; thus, these disparities appear poised to persist.
Working Paper
Saving and Wealth Accumulation among Student Loan Borrowers: Implications for Retirement Preparedness
Borrowing for education has increased rapidly in the past several decades, such that the majority of non-housing debt on US households' balance sheets is now student loan debt. This chapter analyzes the implications of student loan borrowing for later-life economic well-being, with a focus on retirement preparation. We demonstrate that families holding student loan debt later in life have less savings than their similarly educated peers without such debt. However, these comparisons are misleading if the goal is to characterize the experience of the typical student borrower, as they fail to ...
Working Paper
Broadband in the labor market: The impact of residential high speed internet on married women's labor force participation
This paper investigates how high-speed home Internet has impacted married women's labor force participation. I estimate the net effect of individual Internet usage on labor supply using an instrumental variables strategy which exploits cross-state variation in supply-side constraints to residential broadband Internet access. Results indicate that married women who use the Internet are more likely to participate in the labor force. The average effects mask substantial heterogeneity and increases in participation are concentrated on women with higher levels of education and children. The ...
Working Paper
Comparing Micro and Macro Sources for Household Accounts in the United States: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Household income, spending, and net worth are key inputs in macroeconomic forecasting and economic research. Macro-level data sources are often used to measure household accounts, but lack important information about heterogeneity across different types of households that can be found in micro-level data sources. This paper compares aggregates computed based on one micro-level data source--the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)--with macro-level sources of information on household accounts. We find that on most measures, aggregates computed from the SCF line up well with macro-level data ...
Discussion Paper
Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances
New data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) show that long-standing and substantial wealth disparities between families in different racial and ethnic groups were little changed since the last survey in 2016; the typical White family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family.
Working Paper
Returning to the Nest: Debt and Parental Co-residence Among Young Adults
This paper examines the relationship between a young adults' debt burden and the decision to co-reside with a parent. Using a quarterly panel of young adults' credit histories, and controlling for age, county, and quarter fixed effects, and local demographic characteristics, unemployment rates, and house prices, we estimate the relationship between current period debt and subsequent decisions to co-reside with a parent. Our results indicate that indebtedness--as measured by average loan balances, declining credit scores and delinquency on accounts--increases flows into parental co-residence. ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy and Birth Rates: The Effect of Mortgage Rate Pass-Through on Fertility
This paper examines whether monetary policy pass-through to mortgage interest rates affects household fertility decisions. Using administrative data on mortgages and births in the UK, our empirical strategy exploits variation in the timing of when families were eligible for a rate adjustment, coupled with the large reductions in the monetary policy rate that occurred during the Great Recession. We estimate that each 1 percentage point drop in the policy rate increased birth rates by 2 percent. In aggregate, this pass-through of accommodative monetary policy to mortgage rates was sufficiently ...
Journal Article
Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2010 to 2013: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2013 provides insights into the evolution of family income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted, in 2010. The survey shows that, over the 2010-13 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 5 percent, while mean income increased 4 percent. The differential movements in median and mean incomes are consistent with increased income inequality over the 2010-13 period, though some of that differential growth simply reversed the cyclical decrease in income inequality that ...
Discussion Paper
Recent Trends in Wealth-Holding by Race and Ethnicity : Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Data from the newly released 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances show wealth has grown for families across race and ethnicity groups since 2013, but substantial disparities between groups persist.
Journal Article
Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2016 provides insights into the evolution of family income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted, in 2013. The survey shows that, over the 2013-16 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes rose 10 percent, and mean income increased 14 percent. Real median net worth increased 16 percent, and mean net worth increased 26 percent. The data also indicate that gains in income and net worth are broad based, occurring across many ...