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Working Paper
Has Intergenerational Progress Stalled? Income Growth Over Five Generations of Americans
We find that each of the past four generations of Americans was better off than the previous one, using a post-tax, post-transfer income measure constructed annually from 1963-2022 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. At age 36–40, Millennials had a real median household income that was 18 percent higher than that of the previous generation at the same age. This rate of intergenerational progress was slower than that experienced by the Silent Generation (34 percent) and Baby Boomers (27 percent), but similar to that experienced by Generation X (16 ...
Working Paper
Whose Child Is This? Shifting of Dependents Among EITC Claimants Within the Same Household
Using a panel of household level tax data, we estimate the degree to which dependents are "reassigned" between tax units within households, and how these reassignments affect combined tax liabilities. Reassigning dependents reduces combined tax liabilities on average, suggesting some household level coordination. Additionally, when EITC benefits expanded in 2009, reassignments increasingly involved adding a third child to tax returns to claim these new benefits. However, the subgroup reassigning towards three child tax units actually increased total household tax liabilities, suggesting ...
Discussion Paper
Financial Well-Being of Individuals Living in Areas with Concentrated Poverty
Much of the attention to income inequality and poverty is focused on individual level circumstances. However, researchers have also observed that living in an area of concentrated poverty may result in additional disadvantages to individuals beyond that which results from their own individual poverty status.
Working Paper
Are Central Cities Poor and Non-White?
For much of the 20th century, America's central cities were viewed as synonymous with economic and social hardship, often used as proxy for low-income communities of color. Since the 1990s, however, many metropolitan areas have seen a resurgence of interest in central city neighborhoods. Theoretical models of income sorting lead to ambiguous predictions about where households of different income levels will live within metropolitan areas. In this paper, we explore intra-city spatial patterns of income and race for U.S. metropolitan areas, focusing particularly on the locations of low-income ...
Discussion Paper
Holiday Spending and Financing Decisions in the 2015 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking
One of the recurring themes in the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) is a lack of savings capacity for many individuals. This was manifested in the 2015 survey by the nearly half of respondents who would borrow or sell something to cover a $400 emergency expense (Federal Reserve Board, 2016).
Discussion Paper
Household Finances under COVID-19: Evidence from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking
This first article looks at select results from the most recent Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), originally fielded in October 2019, and from supplemental SHED surveys fielded in April and July 2020 to measure the economic impact of the pandemic.
Report
Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019, Featuring Supplemental Data from April 2020
This report describes the responses to the 2019 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) as well as responses to a follow-up survey conducted in April 2020. The Federal Reserve Board has fielded this survey each fall since 2013 to understand the wide range of financial challenges and opportunities facing families in the United States.
Working Paper
Financial Repercussions of SNAP Work Requirements
This paper considers the credit response of individuals after the implementation of new work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) benefits using a large nationally representative sample of credit records. It does so by exploiting county-level variation in the implementation of work requirements after the Great Recession in a difference-in-differences design. We find that the implementation of new SNAP work requirements leads more people to seek out new credit and leads to an increase in credit account openings. New work requirements also result in an increase in total ...
Discussion Paper
Does it Matter who your Parents are? Findings on Economic Mobility from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking
Coming out of the Great Recession, there are renewed concerns about the level of economic opportunity throughout the income distribution and the extent to which economic advancement is a realistic goal for all American families.
Working Paper
Evaluating the Success of President Johnson's War on Poverty: Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Full-Income Poverty Measure
We evaluate progress in President's Johnson's War on Poverty. We do so relative to the scientifically arbitrary but policy relevant 20 percent baseline poverty rate he established for 1963. No existing poverty measure fully captures poverty reductions based on the standard that President Johnson set. To fill this gap, we develop a Full-income Poverty Measure with thresholds set to match the 1963 Official Poverty Rate. We include cash income, taxes, and major in-kind transfers and update poverty thresholds for inflation annually. While the Official Poverty Rate fell from 19.5 percent in 1963 ...