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Discussion Paper
The Branch Puzzle : Why Are there Still Bank Branches?
We provide evidence that the persistence of the large number of local bank branches across the country may be due to the fact that both depositors and small businesses continue to value local bank branches.
Working Paper
Estate vs. capital gains taxation: an evaluation of prospective policies for taxing wealth at the time of death
Debate over the U.S. federal estate tax has intensified recently as a result of the sunset provisions in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001 and changes in law passed in conjunction with the "fiscal cliff" at the end of 2012. Despite recent changes in the law, there remains an open debate regarding the extent to which prospective estates comprise assets that have been taxed previously. Using wealth data on U.S. households, we forecast changes in household wealth in the coming decade and calculate the importance of untaxed wealth in bequeathed estates. ...
Journal Article
Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2016 to 2019: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances for 2019 provides insights into the evolution of family income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted in 2016. The survey shows that over the 2016–19 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes rose 5 percent, and mean income decreased 3 percent. Real median net worth increased 18 percent, and mean net worth rose 2 percent. This survey marks the first in the aftermath of the Great Recession in which between-survey changes in the median outpaced changes in the mean for ...
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
Changes in the Distribution of After-Tax Wealth: Has Income Tax Policy Increased Wealth Inequality?
A substantial share of the wealth of Americans is held in tax-deferred form such as in retirement accounts or as unrealized capital gains. Most data and statistics on assets and wealth is reported on a pre-tax basis, but pre-tax values include an implicit tax liability and may not provide as accurate a measure of the financial position or material well-being of families. In this paper, we describe the distribution of tax-deferred assets in the SCF from 1989 to 2013, provide new estimates of the income tax liabilities implicit in those assets, and present new statistics on the level and ...
Working Paper
Effective tax rates and measures of business size
This paper uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the NBER TAXSIM model to estimate marginal and average tax rates for households that own businesses that are pass-thru entities. We examine how marginal and average tax rates vary by the size of business using four different measures of the size: net income, gross receipts, business value, and number of employees. The analysis also uses the long-time series of SCF cross-sections to examine how tax rates for business owners have evolved over the various changes in tax policy of the last two decades.
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 ...
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 ...
Working Paper
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Family Economic Well-being: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruptions to the U.S. labor market and economic activity. We establish connections between family experiences of the pandemic, their income under normal conditions, and their later economic well-being using the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. By their interview, one-third of families experienced net employment declines, one-third had teleworked, and one-fifth had significant COVID-19-related health events. These experiences strongly reflected families’ positions in the income distribution, with lower-income families bearing the brunt. They also ...
Discussion Paper
U.S. Families’ Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Between 2019 and 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruptions to the U.S. labor market and broader economic activity, leading to unprecedented levels of fiscal support. Nonetheless, over this period, net changes in major economic indicators were consistent with a robust economy, and according to the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), U.S. families experienced broad-based improvements in their finances, particularly with respect to net worth (Aladangady et al., 2023).