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Working Paper
Measuring Income and Wealth at the Top Using Administrative and Survey Data
Administrative tax data indicate that U.S. top income and wealth shares are substantial and increasing rapidly (Piketty and Saez 2003, Saez and Zucman 2014). A key reason for using administrative data to measure top shares is to overcome the under-representation of families at the very top that plagues most household surveys. However, using tax records alone restricts the unit of analysis for measuring economic resources, limits the concepts of income and wealth being measured, and imposes a rigid correlation between income and wealth. The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) solves the ...
Working Paper
The annuitization of Americans' resources: a cohort analysis
An analysis of the changes since 1960 in the share of Americans' resources that are annuitized, which has declined slightly for younger Americans but has risen dramatically for the elderly, with important implications for the national saving rate and income inequality.
Working Paper
Heterogeneity in Economic Shocks and Household Spending
Large swings in aggregate household-sector spending, especially for big ticket items such as cars and housing, have been a dominant feature of the macroeconomic landscape in the past two decades. Income and wealth inequality increased over the same period, leading some to suggest the two phenomena are interconnected. Indeed, there is supporting evidence for the idea that heterogeneity in economic shocks and spending are connected, most notably in studies using local-area geography as the unit of analysis. The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) provides a household-level perspective on changes ...
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 ...
Discussion Paper
How Does Intergenerational Wealth Transmission Affect Wealth Concentration?
In this note, we seek to establish the role of intergenerational wealth transmission by using the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which contains extensive information about household balance sheets, intergenerational transfers made and received, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents.
Discussion Paper
The Role of Social Security in Overall Retirement Resources: A Distributional Perspective
In this note, we first present trends in participation in employment-related retirement plans, and then provide analysis for one birth cohort, nearing retirement age, of the impact of Social Security on retirement wealth.
Discussion Paper
Are Disappearing Employer Pensions Contributing to Rising Wealth Inequality?
Focusing our attention on families close to retirement, we consider the interplay between employer-sponsored retirement wealth and Social Security.
Working Paper
The effect of self-reported transitory income shocks on household spending
We use repeated cross-sections of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to study the effect of self-reported transitory income shocks on household food spending. The self-reported shocks in the SCF are derived from survey questions about the gap between actual and "normal" income. This approach stands in contrast to existing income shock measures in the literature, which are generally derived from the residuals of estimated earnings or income equations. Although the self-reported transitory shocks could potentially give very different answers, the overall variance and asymmetry of shocks ...
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 ...
Report
The Limited Role of Intergenerational Transfers for Understanding Racial Wealth Disparities
Transfers of wealth between generations—whether through inheritances or inter vivos gifts—are less important in explaining racial disparities in wealth than might be expected. While this factor looms large in the media’s discussions of racial inequality, it explains relatively little of the disparities evident in the data. One reason is that most people, regardless of race, receive no inheritance or other transfer of substantial value. In addition, most recipients of inheritances ultimately consume those bequests and do not plan to leave substantial gifts to their offspring. Further, ...