Survey of Consumer Finances

Intro and Overview

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is a cross-sectional survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Board, usually every three years. Topics include family finances, pensions, income, and demographic characteristics. Earlier versions of the survey do contain a panel component (1983 respondents were re-interviewed in 1986 and 1989, and 2007 respondents were re-interviewed in 2009). The most recent year is 2016, and there are about 6,500 family respondents.

Closed captioning is available for this video.

Tips for Getting Started

The Federal Reserve webpage has a helpful Codebook Search Links to an external site. tool to allow you to explore survey content.

This guide Links to an external site. is essential for correct inference from the SCF. Stata users can find an ado package and instructions for implementing the recommendations in the guide in this paper:

Karen Pence, 2015. "SCFCOMBO: Stata module to estimate errors using the Survey of Consumer Finances Links to an external site.," Statistical Software Components Links to an external site. S458017, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 04 Oct 2015.

Key Advantages

Detailed information about household finances.

Key Disadvantages

Mostly cross-sectional.
Requires adjustment of standard errors for multiple imputation (see essential reading above)
Data collected only every 3 years

Papers Using these Data

A bibliography of working papers is available here. Links to an external site.

The non-partisan and objective research organization NORC at the University of Chicago also has a listing of published papers. Links to an external site.