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Working Paper
Who uses electronic banking?
This study uses the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances to examine households' use of technologies, including electronic means, to carry out transactions at a financial institution and to gain information for making saving and borrowing decisions. Household use of various technologies is correlated with household income, financial assets, age, and years of education. Results suggest that relatively new electronic technologies are used by relatively few households, and that household use of electronic sources of information for financial decisionmaking is barely off the ground.
Journal Article
Changes in U.S. family finances from 2007 to 2010: evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
The Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances for 2010 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth since the 2007 survey. The survey shows that, over the 2007?10 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 7.7 percent, while mean income fell more sharply, an 11.1 percent decline. Both median and mean net worth decreased even more dramatically than income over this period, though the relative movements in the median and the mean are reversed; the median fell 38.8 percent, and the mean fell 14.7 percent. This article reviews ...
Working Paper
Household saving and portfolio change: evidence from the 1983-89 SCF panel
There are very few sources of high-quality data on the dynamics of wealth accumulation. This paper uses newly-available data from the 1983-89 panel of the Survey of Consumer Finances to examine household saving and portfolio change over the 1980s. The 1983 SCF collected detailed information on households' assets, liabilities, income and other characteristics for a sample of 4,103 families. In 1989, 1,479 of these families were re-interviewed using a similar questionnaire. After describing the sample and methodology of the panel survey, we analyze changes in household wealth over the 1983-89 ...
Journal Article
Recent changes in U.S. family finances: evidence from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances
Reviews changes in the income and wealth of U.S. families between 2001 and 2004. The discussion draws on data from the Federal Reserve Board's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances for those years and also uses evidence from earlier years of the survey to place the 2001-04 changes in a broader context.
Working Paper
Saving and permanent income: evidence from the 1992 SCF
Working Paper
Ponds and streams: wealth and income in the U.S., 1989 to 2007
Much discussion treats the working definitions of wealth and income as if they were self-evident, but definitional choices can make substantial differences in the overall picture. To provide a clear basis on which to examine family wealth and income their interrelationship, this paper begins with a basic discussion of a range of possible measures of those concepts. Using the measures developed, the paper examines the distributions of wealth and income and their joint properties using data from the 1989?2007 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Among other things, the data show a ...