Search Results
Journal Article
Recent Changes in U.S. Family Finances: Results from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances
Using data from the Federal Reserve Board's two most recent Surveys of Consumer Finances, this article provides a detailed picture of changes in the financial condition of U.S. families between 1995 and 1998. The financial situation of families changed notably in the three-year period. While income continued a moderate upward trend, net worth grew strongly, and the increase in net worth was broadly shared by different demographic groups. A booming stock market accounts for a substantial part of the rise in net worth, but the data also suggest that improvements in financial circumstances ...
Journal Article
Recent changes in U. S. family finances: results from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances
Using data from the Federal Reserve Board's two most recent Surveys of Consumer Finances, this article provides a detailed picture of changes in the financial condition of U.S. families between 1995 and 1998. The financial situation of families changed notably in the three-year period. While income continued a moderate upward trend, net worth grew strongly, and the increase in net worth was broadly shared by different demographic groups. A booming stock market accounts for a substantial part of the rise in net worth, but the data also suggest that improvements in financial circumstances ...
Working Paper
Identity, Identification and Identifiers : The Global Legal Entity Identifier System
Identity is a critical concept in the rational interactions of any set of objects involving subject-object relationships. The objects must be distinguished according to some framework in order for such relationships to have meaning. In the world of economic systems, relationships such as ownership and responsibility require specific parties to be fixed with a high degree of certainty. This need is particularly strong in financial markets, where transactions can take place in nanoseconds. This paper discusses a particular framework for defining economic actors, the Global Legal Entity ...
Working Paper
The other, other half: changes in the finances of the least wealthy 50 percent, 2007-2009
In discussions of household wealth, it is not surprising that discussion often tends to focus on the upper half of the wealth distribution: According to the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), that group held 97.5 percent of all directly owned household wealth. This paper investigates the wealth dynamics of this group using data from the 2007-2009 SCF panel to examine the degree of distributional mobility among this group, the demographic characteristics associated with such change and the role of initial portfolio allocation. It also provides information from earlier SCFs and the 2010 ...
Working Paper
Pensions, social security, and the distribution of wealth
This paper uses the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to examine pension coverage, estimate Social Security and pension wealth for U.S. households in 1989 and 1992, and estimate the effects of pension wealth on non-pension net worth. As expected, the SCF data show that including pensions and Social Security in net worth makes the distribution more even. The analysis of the effects of pension wealth on other types of savings indicates that there is a negative effect of defined benefit plan coverage on non-pension net worth. Surprisingly, the effect of defined contribution plans, such as 401(k) ...
Working Paper
Surveying the aftermath of the storm: changes in family finances from 2007 to 2009
In 2009, the Federal Reserve Board implemented a survey of families that participated in the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to gain detailed information on the effects of the recent recession on all types of households. Using data from the 2007-09 SCF panel, we highlight the variation in households' financial experiences by examining the distribution of changes in families' balance sheets. Further, we use information on changes in families' saving, investing, and spending behavior to consider the potential longer-term consequences of the current recession on households' finances and ...
Working Paper
Banking market definition: evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
This paper uses data from the triennial waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1992 to 2004 to examine changes in the use of financial services with implications for the definition of banking markets. Despite powerful technological and regulatory shifts over this period, households' banking markets overall remained largely local--the median distance to a provider of financial services remained under four miles. However, there has been rapid growth in the use of non-depository financial institutions over the period, particularly non-local ones. This increase occurred across a wide ...
Working Paper
Discovering the universe: measuring the role of finance companies in the U.S. economy
Credit to consumers and business is critical to the efficient functioning of the U.S. economy, and finance companies are a key source of such credit. Every five years, the Federal Reserve conducts a two-part survey: the Census of Finance Companies (CFC) to identify the universe of such firms and the Survey of Finance Companies (SFC) to obtain balance-sheet data from firms identified in the CFC. In 2010, this survey underwent a major revision that addressed both the absence of a comprehensive list frame and low response rates. A follow-up study of nonrespondents to the CFC was conducted to ...