Search Results
Briefing
Getting to Work in New England: Commuting Patterns across the Region
Commuting is nearly ubiquitous across New England. Employers in cities and towns large and small depend on workers who commute from communities near and far. Communities, in turn, rely on employers located in cities and towns scattered in every direction to provide jobs for their residents. Workers may choose to live in a city other than where they work for a host of reasons, including housing and transportation options, school preferences, and work locations of a partner or spouse. This Regional Brief analyzes data on current commuting patterns, using 2022 New England data primarily. While ...
Working Paper
Does education loan debt influence household financial distress? An assessment using the 2007-09 SCF Panel
This paper uses the recent 2007-09 SCF panel to examine the influence of student loans on financial distress. Families with student loans in 2007 have higher levels of financial distress than families without such loans, and these families were more susceptible to transitions to financial distress during the early stages of the Great Recession. This correlation persists once we control for a host of other demographic, work-status, and household balance sheet measures. Families with an average level of student loans were 3.1 percentage points more likely to be 60 days late paying bills and 3 ...
Working Paper
Do rising top income shares affect the incomes or earnings of low and middle-income families?
This paper uses US state panel data to explore the relationship between the share of income received by affluent households and the level of income and earnings received by low and middle-income families. A rising top share of income can potentially lead to increases in the incomes of low and middle-income families if economic growth is sufficiently responsive to increases in inequality. A substantial literature on the impacts of inequality on economic growth exists, but has failed to achieve consensus, with various studies finding positive impacts, negative impacts, and no impacts on growth ...
Working Paper
Do the Rich Really Save More? Answering an Old Question Using the Survey of Consumer Finances with Direct Measures of Lifetime Earnings and an Expanded Wealth Concept
The question of whether affluent households save at a higher rate than other parts of the distribution has been asked by economists on numerous occasions since the 1950s. It is standard in this research to define affluent, or “rich,” households as those with high lifetime earnings or income to better ground the empirical question in relevant theory. However, results in the literature are mixed regarding whether rich households in fact save more than others, with some studies suggesting a generally flat saving-rate profile across the distribution and others supporting the notion that the ...
Working Paper
Wealth Distribution and Retirement Preparation among Early Savers
This paper develops a new combined-wealth measure by augmenting data on net worth from the Survey of Consumer Finances with estimates of defined benefit (DB) pension and expected Social Security wealth. We use this concept to explore retirement preparation among two groups of households in pre-retirement years (aged 40 through 49 and 50 through 59), and to explore the concentration of wealth. We find evidence of moderate, but rising, shortfalls in retirement preparation. We also show that including DB pension and Social Security wealth results in markedly lower measures of wealth ...
Report
Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2010 to 2013: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
The Federal Reserve Board’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) collects information about family incomes, net worth, balance sheet components, credit use, and other financial outcomes.1 The 2013 SCF reveals substantial disparities in the evolution of income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted, in 2010.
Working Paper
Comparing Micro and Macro Sources for Household Accounts in the United States: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Household income, spending, and net worth are key inputs in macroeconomic forecasting and economic research. Macro-level data sources are often used to measure household accounts, but lack important information about heterogeneity across different types of households that can be found in micro-level data sources. This paper compares aggregates computed based on one micro-level data source--the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)--with macro-level sources of information on household accounts. We find that on most measures, aggregates computed from the SCF line up well with macro-level data ...
Working Paper
Do the Rich Really Save More? Answering an Old Question Using the SCF with Direct Measures of Lifetime Earnings and an Expanded Wealth Concept
The question of whether affluent households save at a higher rate has been asked by economists on numerous occasions since the 1950s. It is standard in this research to identify affluent, or “rich,” households as those with high lifetime earnings or income to better ground the empirical question in relevant theory. Existing results in the literature, however, are mixed on whether rich households in fact save more than others, with some suggesting a generally flat savings profile across the distribution and others supporting the notion that the rich do indeed save more. Many of the ...
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 ...