R E S E A R C H & A N A LY S I S

Changes in U.S. Family Financesfrom 2019 to 2022
Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
October 2023

B O A R D O F G OV E R N O R S O F T H E
F E D E R A L R E S E RV E S Y S T E M

The Federal Reserve System is the central
bank of the United States. It performs five key
functions to promote the effective operationof the U.S. economy and, more generally, thepublic interest.
The Federal Reserve■ conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment
and stable prices in the U.S. economy;■ promotes the stability of the financial system and seeks to minimize
and contain systemic risks through active monitoring and engagement in
the U.S. and abroad;■ promotes the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions
and monitors their impact on the financial system as a whole;■ fosters payment and settlement system safety and efficiency throughservices to the banking industry and U.S. government that facilitate
U.S.-dollar transactions and payments; and■ promotes consumer protection and community development throughconsumer-focused supervision and examination, research and analysis of
emerging consumer issues and trends, community economic development
activities, and administration of consumer laws and regulations.
To learn more about us, visit www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm.

iContents
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... iii
Executive Summary ......................................................................................................... 1
Income ............................................................................................................................... 5
Income by Family Characteristics ......................................................................................... 7

Net Worth ........................................................................................................................ 11
Net Worth by Family Characteristics ................................................................................... 13

Assets .............................................................................................................................. 15
Financial Assets .............................................................................................................. 16
Box 1. Retirement Plan Participation ................................................................................. 17
Box 2. Direct and Indirect Holdings of Publicly Traded Stock ................................................ 19
Nonfinancial Assets ......................................................................................................... 18
Box 3. Net Housing Wealth and Housing Affordability .......................................................... 21
Box 4. Business Ownership .............................................................................................. 23

Debt .................................................................................................................................. 25
Debt Holdings by Type ...................................................................................................... 26
Box 5. Student Debt ......................................................................................................... 27

Financial Vulnerability ................................................................................................... 29
Debt Burden .................................................................................................................... 29
Credit Market Experiences ................................................................................................ 31

Appendix A: The Data in This Report ......................................................................... 33
Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures .................................... 35
Adjustment for Inflation .................................................................................................... 36
Definition of “Family” ....................................................................................................... 36
Asset and Liability Categories ........................................................................................... 37
Measures of Debt Burden and Credit Market Experiences ................................................... 40
Percentiles of the Distributions of Income and Net Worth .................................................... 42
Racial and Ethnic Classifications ....................................................................................... 43
Classifications of Educational Attainment .......................................................................... 45
Age Classifications .......................................................................................................... 46
The Sampling Techniques ................................................................................................. 46
The Interviews ................................................................................................................. 48
Weighting ........................................................................................................................ 49
Sources of Error ............................................................................................................... 49

iii

Acknowledgments
This report was prepared by staff in the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research andStatistics (R&S).
R&S develops and presents economic and financial data and analysis for use by the Board of Governors, the Federal Open Market Committee, and other Federal Reserve System officials. It also
fosters a broader understanding of issues relating to economic policy by conducting economic andstatistical research and by supplying data and analyses for public release. R&S staff members
Aditya Aladangady, Jesse Bricker, Andrew C. Chang, Sarena Goodman, Jacob Krimmel, Kevin B.
Moore, Sarah Reber, Alice Henriques Volz, and Richard A. Windle prepared this report with assistance from YeJin Ahn and Eva Ma.
If you have questions about this report, contact alice.h.volz@frb.gov.
Please cite this report as Aladangady, Aditya, Jesse Bricker, Andrew C. Chang, Sarena Goodman,
Jacob Krimmel, Kevin B. Moore, Sarah Reber, Alice Henriques Volz, and Richard A. Windle (2023).
Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer
Finances. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October, https://doi.org/10.17016/8799.

1

Executive Summary
The Federal Reserve Board’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) collects information
about family income, net worth, balance sheet components, credit use, and other financial outcomes.1 The Federal Reserve has fielded the modern version of the interview survey of U.S. families every three years since 1989.2
Between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted society and economic activity. Nonetheless, the SCF reveals broad-based improvements in U.S. family finances
over this period, particularly with respect to net worth.3
Key findings in this report include the following:

Income• Between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, real median family income (which is measured for theyear before the survey) rose a relatively modest 3 percent, while real mean family income grew
15 percent.4 Increases in income were experienced across the income distribution but werelargest at the top, consistent with some increase in income inequality over this period. Indeed,
the between-survey growth in mean income was one of the largest three-year changes over thehistory of the modern SCF.
• A relatively large share of families, 28 percent, reported that their income during the 2021 calendar year differed from its usual amount—that is, their “usual income”—reflecting elevatedshares of both families with higher-than-usual income and families with lower-than-usual
income.
• Increases in median and mean income were relatively widespread across different types of families, whether grouped by economic characteristics (for example, level of usual income, level of
wealth, urbanicity, or homeowner status) or demographic characteristics (for example, age orrace and ethnicity), and any declines were modest. The exception is across educational groups,

1

See appendix A for a general description of the SCF data as well as key technical aspects of the survey.
The SCF has been conducted in a consistent manner since 1989. Earlier surveys covered related content but used a different survey methodology.
3
In the 2019 SCF, a small portion of the data collection overlapped with early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with
about 9 percent of interviews conducted between February and April 2020. Results from previous surveys were published as articles in the Federal Reserve Bulletin (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/bulletin.htm), which hasceased publication. Beginning with the 2022 survey, results will be published as reports, available on the Board’s website in two locations—on the Publications page, under “Research & Analysis” (https://www.federalreserve.gov/
publications.htm), and in the Survey of Consumer Finances section of the site (https://doi.org/10.17016/
datasets.001).
4
In this report, all dollar amounts from the SCF are adjusted to 2022 dollars using the "current methods" version of theconsumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U-RS), unless otherwise noted.
22Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

where increases in both median and mean income were nearly fully concentrated among families in which the reference person had a college degree.

Net Worth• Between 2019 and 2022, real median net worth surged 37 percent, and real mean net worth
increased 23 percent. These patterns imply some narrowing of the wealth distribution between
surveys. Indeed, the 2019–22 growth in median net worth was the largest three-year increaseover the history of the modern SCF, more than double the next-largest one on record.
• Increases in both median and mean net worth were near universal across different types offamilies, grouped by either economic or demographic characteristics.

Assets• The homeownership rate increased slightly between 2019 and 2022, to 66.1 percent. For families that owned a home, the median net housing value (the value of a home minus homesecured debt) rose from $139,100 in 2019 to $201,000 in 2022, as home values increased
and housing debt was rather flat. Net housing values grew substantially for families across theusual income distribution, reaching their highest levels on record. Correspondingly, housing
affordability fell to historic lows, as the median home was worth more than 4.6 times themedian family income.
• Just over two-thirds of working-age families participated in retirement plans in 2022, up slightly
from 2019. While participation remained uneven across the income distribution, all major
income groups saw increases in participation between 2019 and 2022. Conditional mean balances in account-type retirement plans rose for families in the upper half of the usual income
distribution but fell for those in the bottom half.
• Participation in the stock market increased across the usual income distribution between 2019and 2022, with families between the 50th and 90th percentiles experiencing a substantial
increase. Amid a sizable rise in major stock indexes over this period, all major income groups
experienced robust growth in the conditional median and mean values of their holdings.
• In 2022, 20 percent of all families, 14 percent of families in the bottom half of the usual
income distribution, and nearly half of families in the top decile of the usual income distribution
owned a privately held business. Families that owned businesses had higher income and wealththan those that did not. Further, a family’s income and wealth increased with the number of
employees in their business.

Executive Summary

Debt• Debt secured by residential property was about unchanged between 2019 and 2022. About
42 percent of families in both 2019 and 2022 had debt secured by their primary residence, andthe median amount of this debt decreased by less than 1 percent to $155,600 in 2022.
• Between 2019 and 2022, the share of families with credit card debt was fairly stable (around45 percent). However, median and mean balances for families with credit card debt declined
noticeably to $2,700 and $6,100, respectively.
• The share of families that had student debt in 2022 was 22 percent, unchanged from 2019.
Among families with student debt, median and mean balances were essentially stable, hovering
around $25,000 and $47,000, respectively. Similar to 2019, the distribution of student debt
became increasingly skewed toward higher earners.

Financial Vulnerability• All SCF measures of financial fragility declined between 2019 and 2022. For debtors, themedian leverage ratio—that is, a family’s total debt relative to its total assets—declined to a
20-year low of 29.2 percent, and the median payment-to-income ratio dropped to the lowest
level ever recorded in the SCF (13.4 percent). The fraction of families with payment-to-income
ratios greater than 40 percent declined 0.9 percentage point to 6.5 percent, also the lowest
value on record.
• Families’ ability to stay current on their financial obligations was steady between 2019 and2022 and remained well below levels in the SCF surveys that followed the financial crisis.
Between 2019 and 2022, the share of families that declared bankruptcy in the past five years
declined to 1.3 percent.

3

5

IncomeDuring the three years between the 2019 and2022 surveys, the COVID-19 pandemic

Figure 1. Change in median and mean family
incomes, 2016–22 surveys

caused severe disruptions to the U.S. labormarket and broader economic activity, leading

15

Percent5

to unprecedented levels of fiscal support.

Against this backdrop, U.S. families experi-

12
9

enced increases in median and mean
inflation-adjusted income, measured for the6

year before the survey (figure 1). Median3

income rose a relatively modest 3 percent,0

from $67,900 in 2018 to $70,300 in 2021.
Mean income increased 15 percent—one of
the largest three-year changes in mean
income over the history of the modern SCF—
from $123,400 in 2018 to $141,900 in 2021
(table 1). Gains in income were experienced
across the income distribution but were-3

2016–192019–22
MedianMean

Note: Income is measured for the calendar year prior
to the survey. Changes are based on inflationadjusted dollars.
Source: Here and in subsequent figures and tables,
Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances.

largest toward the top, consistent with someincrease in income inequality over this period.
Three points of context are worth bearing in mind with respect to the measurement of real income
growth between the 2019 and 2022 surveys.
First, the SCF income measure reflects a family’s before-tax income for the full calendar year preceding the survey. This measure aggregates reported income from specific sources, most of whichcorrespond to items on an income tax form.6 In the 2022 survey, some of these sources capture
pandemic-related fiscal support that families received in 2021, including, for example, enhanced
unemployment and food stamp benefits. That said, because the survey did not systematically col-5

Volatility in economic conditions over this period is well reflected in changes in the civilian unemployment rate measured
over different periods relevant for characterizing survey results. Between March 2019 and March 2022, the beginning of
the field period for each of the past two surveys, the unemployment rate edged down, on net, from 3.8 percent to
3.6 percent. In contrast, between calendar year 2018 and calendar year 2021, the reference periods for income inthese same surveys, the unemployment rate rose substantially, on net, from 3.9 percent to 5.3 percent.
6
The sources of income collected in the survey include wages, self-employment and business income, taxable and taxexempt interest, dividends, realized capital gains, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other related support programs provided by the government, pensions and withdrawals from retirement accounts, Social Security, alimony andother support payments, and miscellaneous sources.

6

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Table 1. Before-tax median and mean family income, by selected characteristics of families,
2019 and 2022 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars

Median income

Mean income

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

67.9

70.3

3

123.4

141.9

15

(1.1)

(1.2)

n.a.

(1.9)

(4.2)

n.a.

Less than 20

20.5

21.6

5

20.8

22.5

8

20–39.9

42.5

44.8

6

43.3

45.3

5
5

Family characteristic

All families

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

Percentile of usual income

40–59.9

68.6

71.2

4

69.4

73.2

60–79.9

110.0

115.7

5

112.2

121.9

9

80–89.9

174.3

189.2

9

177.3

201.3

14

90–100

328.0

378.3

15

565.2

691.7

22

Less than 35

56.4

60.5

7

75.5

82.7

9

35–44

86.2

85.9

0

128.6

169.9

32

45–54

90.2

91.9

2

168.5

171.4

2

55–64

73.7

81.9

11

151.4

175.9

16

65–74

58.1

60.9

5

125.0

142.5

14

75 or more

49.9

49.1

−2

86.9

107.9

24

No high school diploma

35.7

32.3

−10

45.9

42.2

−8

High school diploma

53.1

53.0

0

73.9

74.0

0

Some college

59.4

60.0

1

91.6

86.4

−6

College degree

110.9

117.8

6

204.6

242.2

18

White non-Hispanic

80.0

81.1

1

142.4

165.2

16

Black or African American non-Hispanic

46.7

46.0

−2

69.1

71.0

3

Hispanic or Latino

47.2

46.7

−1

67.8

71.5

5

Other or multiple race

64.6

68.3

6

129.8

135.1

4

Asian

n.a.

122.6

n.a.

n.a.

234.8

n.a.

Other (non-Asian) or multiple race

n.a.

57.5

n.a.

n.a.

88.1

n.a.

Owner

89.7

94.0

5

158.5

178.0

12

Renter or other

41.3

42.3

2

58.5

71.7

23

Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)

70.8

73.4

4

130.3

151.9

17

Non-MSA

50.0

57.1

14

73.0

82.6

13

Less than 25

34.6

34.6

0

44.0

43.6

−1

25–49.9

53.9

59.6

11

67.4

69.9

4

50–74.9

81.4

83.1

2

93.4

97.0

4

75–89.9

118.0

140.5

19

150.6

169.5

13

90–100

273.9

301.1

10

496.0

638.1

29

Age of reference person (years)

Education of reference person

Race or ethnicity of respondent

Housing status

Urbanicity

Percentile of net worth

Note: Income is measured for the calendar year before the survey. See appendix B for details on standard errors (shown in parentheses below
the first row of data for the means and medians).
n.a. Not available (relevant data not collected).

Incomelect information on stimulus payments that families received from the government when collecting
2021 income, such payments are excluded from the income measure in this report.
Second, the SCF also includes questions to measure a family’s “usual income” because, in any
given year, a family’s income may reflect a recent spell of unemployment, a bonus from an
employer, a capital loss or gain on investments, or other transitory factors.7 Unsurprisingly, in the2022 survey, a relatively large share of families—28 percent—reported their income was unusual
over the 2021 calendar year, reflecting the large imprint that COVID-19 and myriad pandemicrelated policies left on the U.S. economy.8 Since the introduction of the usual income concept in
the 1995 survey, the only instance in which a greater share of families reported unusual income
was in the Great Recession–era 2010 survey, whereby 31 percent of families reported theirincome was atypical. In both 2010 and 2022, as in all other survey years, the share of families
that reported lower-than-usual income was larger than the share that reported higher-than-usual
income. However, in contrast to the 2010 survey, the share of families that reported higher-thanusual income in 2022 was also elevated and, in fact, was the largest on record.
Finally, between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, price inflation ticked up markedly.9 Without adjustingfor inflation, median and mean income in the SCF rose 20 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

Income by Family Characteristics
The 2022 SCF reveals some predictable patterns in income levels across demographic groups,
and those patterns are largely consistent with previous surveys.10 Across age groups, income
shows a life-cycle pattern, rising to a peak for families in which the reference person is in one of
the middle-age groups and then declining for those in which the reference person is older andincreasingly likely to be retired.11 Income also shows a strong positive association with education;in particular, income among families in which the reference person has a college degree tends tobe substantially higher than for those with less schooling. Mean income among college-educatedfamilies in the 2022 SCF was nearly three times that of families in any other education group.
Among families grouped by the race or ethnicity of the survey respondent, median and mean
7

Usual income is measured in the survey after income has been reported, if respondents indicate their income in thesurvey reference year was unusually high or low compared with what they would expect in a “normal year.”8
An upcoming FEDS Notes article explores families’ experiences of the COVID-19 economy in more detail and can befound on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/default.htm.
9
Inflation reached noticeably high rates during the second quarter of 2021, peaked in mid-2022, and stayed elevatedthrough the remainder of the 2022 survey's field period. Cumulatively, according to the CPI-U-RS (the “current methods”
version of the consumer price index for all urban consumers used to adjust dollar values throughout this report), priceincreases between the 2019 and 2022 surveys were more than twice as much as between the 2016 and 2019 surveys. See appendix B for more detail.
10
Tabulated data from the survey beyond that presented in this report are available on the Board’s website at https://doi.org/10.17016/datasets.001. This information includes some alternative versions of the tables in this report,
including tables that match the structure used in earlier versions of this publication. For those who wish to make further
alternative calculations, this website provides a variety of data files, a data visualization tool, and access to online tabulation software that may be used to create customized tables based on the variables analyzed in this report.
11
Appendix B explains the designation of the reference person used in this report.

7

8

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

income among families in which the survey respondent identified as white non-Hispanic or
Asian—a new grouping in the 2022 survey—are substantially higher than for Black non-Hispanic,
Hispanic, and other (non-Asian) and multiple race families.12 Income is also considerably higher
for homeowners and for families living in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) than for nonhomeowners and families living in non-MSAs.13 Finally, family income is positively correlated with
net worth.
With respect to changes between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, increases in median and mean
income were relatively broad based across different types of families, whether grouped by economic characteristics such as usual income, wealth, urbanicity, or homeowner status, or by demographic characteristics such as age or race and ethnicity, and any declines were modest.14 The
exception is across educational groups, whereby increases in both median and mean income were
essentially fully concentrated among families with a college degree. Families with less education
either saw negligible growth or experienced declines in these measures. Declines in median andmean income were largest—10 percent and 8 percent, respectively—among those without a highschool degree.
Between-survey growth in median and mean income occurred throughout the usual income distribution, with the bottom quintile experiencing 5 percent and 8 percent growth, respectively.15
Growth in both measures was largest for families in the top decile—15 percent and 22 percent,respectively—indicating an increase in income inequality between surveys.
Most age groups experienced increases in both median and mean income between surveys. The
exceptions are families in which the reference person was either 35 to 44 years old, whose
median income was essentially unchanged, or older than 75 years old, whose median income
declined modestly. Interestingly, these two age groups experienced the largest increases in mean
income—32 percent and 24 percent, respectively. Generally speaking, changes in median andmean income indicate a within-age-group widening of the income distribution between surveys.
Over the 2019–22 period, mean income rose for all families grouped by race or ethnicity, withwhite non-Hispanic families experiencing the largest growth—16 percent.16 With respect to12

Appendix B provides information on racial and ethnic identification in the SCF.
In this report, a family is considered a homeowner if at least one person in the family owns at least some part of thefamily’s primary residence.
14
Changes in the experiences of families with particular characteristics can reflect shifts in the demographic compositionof the survey population. For example, both the share of families in which the reference person was older than 55 years
old and the share of families that attended college have been steadily trending up over time. In 2022, there was anotable uptick in the share of families with a college degree relative to 2019. Appendix B provides information on evolutions in the survey’s racial and ethnic composition, educational composition, and age composition.
15
Each quintile in the table represents 20 percent of the population. See appendix B for the income percentile values
used to define the groups.
16
An upcoming FEDS Note article discusses differences in income and wealth holding by race and ethnicity in more detailand can be found on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/default.htm.
13Incomemedian income, only families that identified as other or multiple races (including Asian) saw morethan a modest change—6 percent growth. Otherwise, Hispanic and Black non-Hispanic families
experienced slight decreases, and white non-Hispanic families experienced a slight increase.
Mirroring the top-line changes in income, homeowners as well as renters and other non-owners
experienced median and mean income growth between 2019 and 2022.
Perhaps reflecting pandemic-related factors, such as migration away from cities and increased
remote work, the median income gap between families living in MSAs and those living in nonMSAs narrowed considerably between 2019 and 2022, as median income surged 14 percent
among families in non-MSAs and increased just 4 percent among families living in MSAs.17 However, the mean income gap between the two groups widened further.
For families grouped by percentile of net worth (as measured concurrently in the SCF), median andmean income growth between 2019 and 2022 were most prominent among families in the upper
quartile of the distribution, driven by capital gains. Among families in the bottom quartile, medianincome was essentially unchanged, and mean income marginally declined.

17

For more information on internal migration away from cities and increased remote work, see, for example, Connor
O’Brien (2023), “Tax Data Reveals Large Flight of High Earners from Major Cities during the Pandemic,” Economic Innovation Group, August 8, https://eig.org/high-earners-migration; and Adam Ozimek (2022), “How Remote Work Is Shifting
Population Growth across the U.S.,” Economic Innovation Group, April 13, https://eig.org/how-remote-work-is-shiftingpopulation-growth-across-the-u-s.

9

11

Net Worth
The net improvements in economic performance, including rising house and corporate

Figure 2. Change in median and mean family
net worth, 2016–22 surveys

equity prices that well exceeded consumer
price inflation, supported substantial

40

increases in median and mean inflation-

35

adjusted net worth—the difference between

30

Percent

25

families’ assets and liabilities—between

20

2019 and 2022 (figure 2).18 Specifically, real

15

median net worth surged 37 percent to10$192,900, and real mean net worth increased

5

23 percent to $1,063,700 (table 2), acceler-0

ating the steady growth experienced over the
2013–19 period.19 The 2019–22 changes

2016–192019–22
MedianMean

Note: Changes are based on inflation-adjusted dollars.

imply some narrowing of the wealth distribution between surveys. Indeed, growth inmedian net worth was the largest increase overthe history of the modern SCF, more than double
the next-largest one on record.20
While income and net worth both trended up between surveys, there are substantive differences inthe degree and breadth of the improvements in families’ finances indicated by the two measures.
In general, even though they are positively correlated, income and net worth do not always move inlockstep. Income is a flow measure based on economic activity in the previous year, which families
either spend or save. Net worth is a stock measure on the date of the interview, reflecting cumulative economic activity over a longer period. Several other factors likely contributed to differential
movements in income and net worth between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, including notablechanges in the U.S. economy between the reference periods for these measures, the large share

18

Between the first quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2022, just before the beginning of the field period for each of
the last two surveys, real gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 2.1 percent. Over the same period,
the national CoreLogic Home Price Index increased at a 11.8 percent annual rate, and the value of corporate equity
holdings, as measured by a broad stock price index, grew at a 16.1 percent annual rate. These nominal changes aremeasured from March to March—and, for the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock price index, using the monthly average—of
the respective survey years. Between March 2022 and March 2023, roughly the 2022 SCF field period, the house priceindex grew an additional 2.3 percent and the stock market index declined 9.6 percent.
19
Looking back further, between the 2010 and 2013 surveys, real median net worth decreased 2 percent, and real mean
net worth did not change despite the recovery in house and other asset prices that followed the declines brought on by
the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2010, real median net worth declined 39 percent, and real mean net worth
declined 15 percent.
20
Between 2004 and 2007, real median net worth increased 18 percent.

12

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Table 2. Family median and mean net worth, selected characteristics of families,
2019 and 2022 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars, except as noted

Median net worth

Mean net worth

2019

2022

141.1

192.9

Percentchange2019–22
37

2019

2022

868.0

1,063.7

Percentchange2019–22
23

(4.3)

(7.5)

n.a.

(18.1)(23.2)

n.a.

Less than 20
20–39.9

11.3
51.1

14.0
71.0

24
39

132.2
157.6

129.7
218.7

–2
39

40–59.9

107.7

60–79.9
80–89.9

230.8
443.2

159.3

48

255.7

385.4

51

307.2
747.0

33
69

490.3
985.4

636.8
1,264.730
28

90–100Age of reference person (years)

1,842.3

2,556.2

39

5,622.3

6,629.6

18

Less than 35
35–44

16.1
105.9

39.0
135.6

143
28

88.5
505.6

183.5
549.6

107
9

45–54
55–64

195.4
246.3

247.2
364.5

27
48

965.9
1,363.1

975.8
1,566.9

1
15

65–74
75 or more

308.8
295.4

409.9
335.6

33
14

1,411.6
1,133.2

1,794.6
1,624.1

27
43

No high school diploma
High school diploma

23.7
85.8

38.1
106.8

60
24

159.8
353.8

175.6
413.3

10
17

Some college
College degree

102.9
357.3

136.5
464.6

33
30

436.4
1,761.9541.1
2,003.4

24
14

Race or ethnicity of respondent
White non-Hispanic

218.1

285.0

31

1,140.0

1,367.2

20Black or African American non-Hispanic
Hispanic or Latino

28.0
41.9

44.9
61.6

60
47

165.1
191.9

211.5
227.5

28
19

Other or multiple race
Asian

86.4
n.a.

132.9
536.0

54
n.a.

761.8
n.a.

849.8
1,826.9

12
n.a.

n.a.

62.9

n.a.

n.a.

389.4

n.a.

295.5

396.2

34

1,277.5

1,530.9

20

7.3

10.4

43

110.8

154.9

40

146.0
104.8

199.2
146.4

36
40

934.8
376.6

1,133.1
652.1

21
73

Family characteristic

All families
Percentile of usual income

Education of reference person

Other (non-Asian) or multiple race
Housing status
Owner
Renter or other
Urbanicity
Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
Non-MSA
Percentile of net worth
Less than 25

.4

3.5

900

–15.7

–5.3

66

66.5
259.8

93.3
356.3

40
37

67.4
273.9

98.8
373.7

47
36

75–89.9756.6

1,036.2

37

815.7

1,102.4

35

90–1003,012.5

3,794.626

6,641.8

7,810.518

25–49.9
50–74.9

Note: Net worth is the difference between families’ assets and liabilities. See appendix B for definitions of asset and liability categories used in
the Survey of Consumer Finances, as well as details on standard errors (shown in parentheses below the first row of data for the means andmedians).
n.a. Not available (relevant data not collected).

Net Worthof families that reported unusual income in the 2022 survey, and elevated levels of saving early inthe pandemic that have been identified in other data sources.21

Net Worth by Family Characteristics
Cross-sectional differences in net worth across groups generally mirror those for income, but thegaps are larger. For example, families in which the reference person had a college degree had
twice the median income of those with some college but over three times the median net worth.
Separately, individuals usually save for retirement throughout their working career and then spend
those savings in retirement, which generates a life-cycle pattern in net worth.
With respect to changes between the 2019 and 2022 surveys, increases in both median andmean net worth were near universal across different types of families. The one exception is thatmean net worth in the bottom quintile of the usual income distribution modestly decreased (toabout $130,000).
All other segments of the distribution saw robust growth in mean net worth, with the second andthird quintiles posting the largest gains—39 percent and 51 percent, respectively. Mean net worth
growth among families in the top decile of the usual income distribution was 18 percent; due tothis group’s high level of baseline wealth, the dollar change was several times that of any othergroup. Growth in median net worth between 2019 and 2022 was substantial across the usual
income distribution but, again, the least among families in the bottom quintile, who saw 24 percent growth (to $14,000).
Median and mean net worth rose for all age groups. The largest growth was among families
younger than 35 years old, who saw their median and mean net worth more than double between
surveys but remained the least wealthy age group. Growth among the wealthiest group—65 to
74 years old—was also notably high (33 percent and 27 percent, respectively). In comparison withother age groups, families older than 75 years saw relatively modest median wealth growth(14 percent) and relatively large mean income growth (43 percent), indicating wealth inequality
among these older families increased between surveys.

21

The SCF asks respondents whether, over the preceding year, the family’s spending was less than, more than, or about
equal to its income. This measure of saving does not capture the amount a family saved over the past year, only
whether any saving occurred. By this metric, in the 2022 survey, 82 percent of families in the top decile of the usual
income distribution saved, compared with 66 percent of families in the upper-middle segment and 43 percent of families
in the bottom half. Between 2019 and 2022, the overall fraction of families that saved edged down from 59 percent to56 percent, with decreased saving observed among all three segments. For more on elevated levels of saving early inthe pandemic, see, for example, Aditya Aladangady, David Cho, Laura Feiveson, and Eugenio Pinto (2022), “Excess Savings during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” FEDS Notes (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,
October 21), https://doi.org/10.17016/2380-7172.3223.

13

14

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

All education groups experienced robust growth in median and mean net worth between survey
years, a notable departure from movements in income. Further, with respect to median net worth,families that did not complete high school experienced the largest gain (60 percent). Mean net
worth between 2019 and 2022 grew less than median net worth across education groups, ranging
from 10 percent among families without a high school degree to 24 percent among families withsome college. The already substantial gap in mean net worth between families with and without acollege degree widened between surveys.
Median and mean net worth increased substantially for all types of families grouped by race or
ethnicity between 2019 and 2022, whereby the smallest gain—in mean net worth among families
that identified as other or multiple race—was 12 percent. Black non-Hispanic families experienced
the largest growth in both median and mean net worth—60 percent (to $44,900) and 28 percent(to $211,500), respectively—though their 2022 levels remained below all other racial or
ethnic groups.
Between 2019 and 2022, the median and mean net worth of renters or other non-homeowners
grew 43 percent to $10,400 and 40 percent to $154,900, respectively. Among homeowners,
these measures grew 34 percent to $396,200 and 20 percent to $1,530,900, respectively.
Likely reflecting the same pandemic-related forces noted earlier, families living in non-MSAs sawlarger growth in median and mean net worth than those living in MSAs, somewhat narrowing thesubstantial gap in net worth between families by urbanicity.
Median and mean net worth rose throughout the net worth distribution. Growth in median andmean net worth was largest for the bottom quartile and smallest for the top decile. Still, thesegrowth rates reflect substantial level differences in the net worth of each of these groups. Amongfamilies in the bottom quartile, median net worth was $400 in 2019 and $3,500 in 2022, andmean net worth was negative $15,700 in 2019 and negative $5,300 in 2022. Among families inthe top decile, median net worth was $3,012,500 in 2019 and $3,794,600 in 2022, and mean
net worth was $6,641,800 in 2019 and $7,810,500 in 2022.
The balance sheet of families in the middle of the net worth distribution is dominated by housing,
and, as such, increases in their wealth between surveys tend to reflect the extent to which growthin house prices surpassed inflation. Indeed, between 2019 and 2022, the second and third
quartiles saw 40 percent and 37 percent growth, respectively, in median net worth and 47 percent
and 36 percent growth, respectively, in mean net worth.

15

AssetsIn 2022, virtually all families owned some type of asset, little changed from 2019 (table 3). Conditional on holding at least one asset, median total asset holdings rose 26 percent to $332,600 in
2022. The conditional mean value of families’ total assets rose 20 percent to $1,194,300. Thesechanges were driven by increases in the prices of both financial and nonfinancial asset holdings,
notably equities and real estate.
Table 3. Holding and values of assets, 2019 and 2022 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars, except as noted

Percent holding

Conditional median value

Conditional mean value

2019

2022

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

99.6

99.7

263.8

332.6

26

997.2

1,194.3

20

Any financial asset

98.7

99.0

29.9

39.0

31

421.8

511.3

21

Transaction accounts

98.2

98.6

6.1

8.0

30

48.3

62.5

29

Certificates of deposit

7.7

6.5

29.0

26.0

−10

118.2

99.2

−16

Savings bonds

7.5

6.4

.9

2.0

116

9.8

35.6

263

Bonds

1.1

1.1

140.3

210.4

50

757.6

961.2

27

Stocks

15.2

21.0

29.0

15.0

−48

404.0

403.9

0

Pooled investment funds

9.0

11.5

127.5

150.0

18

990.4

961.0

−3

Retirement accounts

50.5

54.3

75.3

86.9

15

295.8

334.0

13

Cash value life insurance

19.0

16.1

10.4

9.7

−7

47.5

55.4

17

Other managed assets

5.9

6.2

133.3

140.0

5

593.8

517.9

−13

Other

7.6

9.4

4.6

6.0

29

83.9

82.1

−2

Any nonfinancial asset

91.4

92.3

225.2

281.5

25

631.2

741.6

17

Vehicles

85.4

86.6

19.9

27.7

39

30.8

40.1

30

Primary residence

64.9

66.1

260.8

323.2

24

398.9

471.0

18

Other residential property

13.1

12.9

185.5

225.0

21

464.1

519.1

12

Equity in nonresidential property

6.7

5.9

83.5

125.0

50

437.1

467.7

7

Business equity

13.4

14.6

103.3

90.0

−13

1,447.5

1,622.5

12

Other

7.7

7.4

17.4

20.0

15

88.8

95.1

7

Balance sheet item

Any asset
Types of financial asset

Types of nonfinancial asset

Note: See appendix B for definitions of asset categories used in the Survey of Consumer Finances.

16

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Financial Assets
Overall, 99 percent of families in 2022 owned at least one financial asset—which includes transaction accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, other bonds, stocks, pooled investment
funds, retirement accounts, cash value life insurance, and other managed assets—little changed
from 2019.22 The conditional median value of all financial assets held by families rose 31 percent
to $39,000 in 2022. The conditional mean value increased 21 percent to $511,300. The large
difference between median and mean values reflects the highly disproportionate share of financial
assets held by some households.
Transaction accounts—which include checking accounts, savings accounts, money market
accounts, call accounts, and prepaid debit cards—remained the most commonly held category offinancial asset in 2022, with an ownership rate of 98.6 percent.23 The conditional median value oftransaction accounts rose 30 percent between 2019 and 2022 to $8,000. The conditional meanvalue of transaction accounts in 2022 was $62,500, up 29 percent from 2019. This growth in balances is fairly broad based across the usual income distribution, except for families in the bottom
quintile, whose median and mean balances decreased a bit.
The second-most commonly held type of financial asset continued to be retirement accounts—
which include individual retirement accounts, Keogh accounts, and certain employer-sponsoredaccounts, such as 401(k), 403(b), and thrift savings accounts (for a discussion of retirement plan
participation, see box 1). Such accounts were held by 54.3 percent of families in 2022, up almost
4 percentage points since 2019. The conditional median value of retirement accounts increased
15 percent between 2019 and 2022 to $86,900, while the conditional mean value rose 13 percent to $334,000 in 2022.
Direct ownership of stocks increased markedly between 2019 and 2022—from 15 percent offamilies to 21 percent—the largest change on record. Conditional median stock holdings fell by
about half, from $29,000 to $15,000, suggesting new entrants into direct stock ownership held
smaller portfolios than longtime stockholding families. Conditional mean direct stock holdings
were unchanged, at around $404,000. Stocks may also be indirectly held in pooled investment
funds and other managed assets, which were held by 11.5 percent and 6.2 percent of families,
respectively (for a discussion of direct and indirect holdings of publicly traded stock, see box 2).
Rates of ownership of almost all other types of financial assets remained below 10 percent, theexception being cash value life insurance at 16.1 percent. Although bonds and savings bonds
were held by very few households, their conditional values grew dramatically between 2019 and22
23

See appendix B for detailed definitions of SCF asset and liability categories.
The SCF asks families about their use of online banking. In 2022, families reported, on average, increased use of online
banking, from 78 percent of families in 2019 to 85 percent.

Assets

Box 1. Retirement Plan Participation
Participation in retirement plans can both increase families’ net worth and provide financial security
during retirement through a guaranteed income in retirement, lower taxes on savings, increased compensation (via employer contributions), or all of the above. In this discussion, a family is considered aparticipant in a retirement plan if they have any of the following: an individual retirement account (IRA);an account-type, defined contribution (DC) pension through an employer, which includes both 401(k)’sand 403(b)’s; or a defined benefit (DB) pension through an employer. The following discussion focuses
on working families with a reference person aged 35 to 64 by usual income group. The focus is onthese families because, generally speaking, these families have finished their education but have notretired.
Across the usual income distribution, families, on average, saw increases in retirement plan participation from 2019 to 2022 (figure A). Overall participation was at its highest level since 2010
(not shown).
The increase in participation in any retirement plan from 2019 to 2022 was driven by increases in IRA
or DC participation across all usual income groups and by increased participation in DB plans for families below the 90th percentile of the usual income distribution. Families are about twice as likely tohave an IRA or DC plan as they are to have a DB plan across the usual income distribution.

Figure A.
A. Title,
Participationin anyretirementplan,
by usual
income group, 2016–22 surveys
Figurewith “figure
title”
paragraphstyle
applied
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

PercentAll

0–49.950–89.9
Percentile of usual income!
2016

2019

90–1002022

Note: Key identiﬁes bars in order from left to right.

For many families, the assets held in IRAs and DC plans (typically associated with either a current or
past job) are among the most important components of their balance sheets and are a key determinantof their future retirement security. Among families that have these assets, the mean combined IRA andDC pension account balance increased to $331,400 in 2022, with the gains concentrated in the top
half of the usual income distribution (table A). Among families in the bottom half of the distribution, themean balance for participating families decreased between 2019 and 2022, from $66,600 to$54,700.1 In contrast, the mean balance for participating families in each of the higher-earning segments increased more than 10 percent—to $226,700 for the upper-middle income group and to$913,300 for the top decile.
(continued)
1

This decline is partially on account of an age composition shift of the bottom half of the usual income distribution toward younger
families, among families participating in a retirement plan. Moreover, this decline is driven by the bottom quartile of the usual
income distribution, among whom participation jumped notably and the conditional mean balance declined 50 percent.

17

18

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Box 1—continued
Table A. Mean retirement savings among those with an individual retirement account or adefined contribution plan, by usual income group, 2016–22 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars

2016

2019

2022

293.1

312.5

331.4

0–49.9

66.0

66.6

54.7

50–89.9

193.6

197.8

226.7

90–100

791.1

803.1

913.3

All
Percentile of usual income

Note: Sample is restricted to families in which the reference person was 35 to 64 years old. Usual income groups are formed from theunconditional distribution in each survey year.

2022, as interest rates increased in 2022. Conditional median bond values increased 50 percent
to $210,400, while conditional median savings bond values increased from $900 to $2,000, or
116 percent. Mean holdings of bonds and savings bonds increased from $757,600 to $961,200
and from $9,800 to $35,600, respectively.

Nonfinancial Assets
The fraction of families reporting ownership of a nonfinancial asset—a broad category that
includes vehicles, residential or nonresidential real estate, and equity in a business—remained
high in 2022 at about 92 percent.
The most commonly held type of nonfinancial asset in 2022 was a vehicle (see appendix B for adefinition of vehicles in this report). Between 2019 and 2022, the fraction of families owning avehicle edged up a bit from 85.4 percent to 86.6 percent; the conditional median and meanvalues of families’ vehicles increased 39 percent and 30 percent, respectively, to $27,700 at themedian and $40,100 at the mean.
Ownership of primary residences increased from 64.9 percent in 2019 to 66.1 percent in 2022.
Homeownership rates have slowly increased over the past two survey waves but remain about
3 percentage points below the peak in 2004.24 Between 2019 and 2022, there was a broadbased increase in families’ reported values of their primary residences. (For a discussion of24

The homeownership rate in 1989 was 63.9 percent. It rose to a peak of 69.1 percent in 2004. Across families groupedby percentile of usual income, there are large differences in homeownership rates, which tend to increase with usual
income in all years. For families in the bottom half of the usual income distribution, the homeownership rate was50.3 percent in 2022, the highest level since 2010.

Assets

Box 2. Direct and Indirect Holdings of Publicly Traded Stock
Families may hold stocks through direct holdings and through indirect holdings, such as retirement
accounts, which are usually less liquid than direct holdings.1 When direct and indirect stock holdings
are combined, the 2022 survey showed a step-up in stock ownership to 58 percent, compared with
53 percent in 2019 and 52 percent in 2016 (figure A, left bars). As in previous years, participation in
the stock market in 2022 rose with usual income groups: 34 percent of families in the bottom half ofthe distribution held stock, compared with 78 percent of families in the upper-middle group and 95 percent of families in the top decile. All three of these groups increased participation between 2019 and2022. The increase for the upper-middle income group was more than twice as large as for the othertwo groups, caused by an increase in the share of these families that have both direct and indirect
stock holdings.

Figure A.
A. Title,
Families
directandparagraphindirect holdingsof stock, by usual income group,
Figurewithwith“figuretitle”
style applied
2013–22 surveys
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

PercentAll

0–49.950–89.9

90–100Percentile of usual income!
2013

2016

2019

2022

Note: Key identiﬁes bars in order from left to right.

In addition to these differences in stock market participation rates, there are significant differences inthe value of stock market holdings across usual income groups, conditional on holding stock. In 2022,
the conditional median value of stock holdings for the bottom half was $12,600, compared with$53,200 for the upper-middle income group and $608,000 for the top decile (table A). Conditionalmean values are substantially larger than the conditional medians for all groups, implying a small
number of households within each group hold most of the value of stock. There are wide differences in
conditional mean and median values within and across groups.
All major usual income groups experienced notable growth in the conditional median and mean valuesof their stock holdings between 2019 and 2022.2 Looking over a longer horizon, since 2013, the conditional median value of stock among families in the bottom half of the distribution decreased 1 percent,while the conditional mean value of stock among these families increased 19 percent. Over the same
horizon, growth in both measures was about 70 percent among families in the top decile. This all said,
these changes over time should be interpreted with caution, as they are influenced by changes in thecomposition of households holding stock. For example, since 2013, the bottom half exhibited a substantial increase in stock market participation, which could push median and mean values down, as
new participants are likely to have smaller holdings of direct and indirect stock.
(continued)
1

Other examples of indirect holdings are pooled investment funds and other managed assets. Indirect holdings, particularly throughtax-deferred retirement accounts, are much more common than direct holdings.
2
That said, the bottom quartile of the usual income distribution experienced declines in both measures.

19

20

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Box 2—continued
Table A. Median and mean levels of directly and indirectly held stock, by usual income group,
2013–22 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars

2013

2016

2019

2022

Conditional median value

45.8

49.3

46.4

52.0

Median for 0–49.9

12.7

12.9

11.5

12.6

Median for 50–89.9

44.3

49.3

46.4

53.2

Median for 90–100

360.3

439.1

508.3

608.0

Conditional mean value

343.5

424.8

432.6

491.8

Mean for 0–49.9

68.3

64.5

64.6

81.5

Mean for 50–89.9

168.3

188.8

202.6

217.4

Mean for 90–100

1233.71684.1

1744.82138.2

housing wealth and affordability, see box 3.) The conditional median value increased 24 percent to$323,200, and the conditional mean value increased 18 percent to $471,000. In addition to ownership of primary residences, 12.9 percent of families in 2022 reported owning other residential
property, such as second homes or time shares, down slightly from 13.1 percent in 2019. The
conditional median value of other real estate increased 21 percent to $225,000.
Ownership of equity in nonresidential property was 5.9 percent in 2022, and conditional medianand mean values of equity in nonresidential property were $125,000 and $467,700, respectively.
Ownership of business equity was 14.6 percent in 2022, up just over 1 percentage point from2019 (for a more detailed discussion of business ownership, see box 4). The conditional medianvalue fell 13 percent to $90,000, while the conditional mean value increased 12 percent to$1,622,500. The large differences between the median and mean values reflect the small fractionof privately held businesses with very high valuations.

Assets

Box 3. Net Housing Wealth and Housing Affordability
For families that own their primary residence, housing wealth increased substantially between 2019and 2022, as the rise in house prices over this period far outpaced inflation. The median net housing
value—defined as the home’s value minus any debts secured by the home (that is, outstanding mortgages, home equity loans, and home equity lines of credit)—increased 44 percent between 2019 and2022, from about $139,100 to $200,000, continuing the rise since 2013 (figure A).1 The mean net
housing value increased 27 percent between 2019 and 2022, from $263,000 to $335,300. These
growth rates in the median and mean net housing values are the largest on record over the history of
the modern Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF).

Figure A.
A. Title,
Net housing
values,
1998–2022
Figurewith “figure
title”
paragraphsurveys
style applied
400
360
320
280
240
200
160
120
80
40
0

Thousands of 2022 dollars

1998

2001

2004

2007

2010
Mean

2013

2016

2019

2022

MedianRegarding levels over the medium run, median and mean net housing wealth reached all-time highs in
2022, eclipsing their pre–Great Recession peaks.
Net housing value gains between 2019 and 2022 were broad based across usual income groups, but
especially pronounced among families in the upper-middle segment of the distribution (figure B).2 However, these changes mask considerable heterogeneity in net housing wealth across the distribution. For(continued)

Figure A.
B. Title,
Mediannet“figure
housingvalues,by usual
incomegroup, 1998–2022 surveys
Figurewithtitle”
paragraphstyle
applied
1.4

Index, 2007=1

1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1998

2001

2004

2007
0–49.92010
50–89.9

2013

2016

2019

2022

90–100Note: The series describe percentiles of usual income.

1

2

Survey respondents are asked to report the value of their home. Only primary residences are included. Debts on the home include
any mortgages or home equity loans against the primary residence.
That said, the uptick was less pronounced among families in the bottom quartile.

21

22

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Box 3—continued
instance, median housing wealth for upper-middle income households in 2022 was still less than halfthat of households in the top 10 percent ($201,000 versus $583,000).
For the bottom 90 percent of the usual income distribution, the rise in net housing wealth, along withthe small increases in homeownership, contributed substantially to growth in net worth (table 1 in themain text). Similar to the overall median, the median net housing values for all income groups in 2022
surpassed their previous peaks in 2007.
While rising house values can be a boon to homeowners, this trend also represents declining housing
affordability for would-be homebuyers. Figure C plots the ratio of the median real home value to medianreal family income reported in the SCF from 1998 through 2022. After the Great Recession, this ratio
declined precipitously before bottoming out at 3.5 in 2016. Despite recent real income gains, themedian home was worth over 4.6 times median family income in 2022, surpassing the previous high of
4.2 in 2007.

Figure A.
C. Title,
Housing
1998–2022
Figurewithaffordability,“figure title”
paragraph surveys
style applied
4.75

Ratio of median housing value to median income

4.50
4.25
4.00
3.75
3.50
3.25
3.00
2.75
1998

2001

2004

2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

Assets

Box 4. Business Ownership
In 2022, 20 percent of families owned a privately held business, the highest level on record in themodern Survey of Consumer Finances (figure A).1 In this discussion, a family is considered a businessowner if the family reported owning a business or if either the reference person or the spouse orpartner was self-employed.2 With respect to the usual income distribution, business ownershipincreased notably among families in the bottom half and the top decile and was largely unchanged
among families in the upper-middle segment. Nonetheless, business ownership remained positively
correlated with usual income. Nearly half of 2022 families in the top decile owned a business.

Figure A.
A. Title,
Families
ownedbusinesses,
usualincome group, 2013–22 surveys
Figurewiththat“figuretitle”
paragraphby
style
applied
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Percent

0–49.9All

50–89.9

90–100Percentile of usual income
2013

2016

2019

2022

Note: Key identifies bars in order from left to right.

Among families that owned businesses in 2022, 78 percent employed fewer than five people, and52 percent owned nonemployer firms, which are primarily either sole proprietorships or self-employed
contractors (table A).3 Conditional mean business equity rises with the number of employees from$142,700 for nonemployer firms to nearly $3.9 million for families with businesses with more than five
employees. Conditional median business equity exhibits a similar pattern, but the values are much
more modest. The median nonemployer business owner reported no net value for their business.
Among families that owned businesses with more than five employees, median business equity was$400,000.
(continued)
1

The forms of business in this category are sole proprietorships, limited partnerships, other types of partnerships, subchapter
S corporations and other types of corporations that are not publicly traded, limited liability companies, and other types of private
businesses. If the family surveyed lived on a farm or ranch that was used at least in part for agricultural business, the value of thatpart, net of the corresponding share of associated debts, is included with other business assets. While our definition differs slightly,
the increase in the fraction of families with businesses since the previous survey is consistent with outside evidence on businessformation from the Census Bureau. See U.S. Census Bureau (2023), Release CB23-130, “Business Formation Statistics, July 2023”(August 11), https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/pdf/historic/bfs_2023m07.pdf.
2
Among the 14.6 percent of families with a business in 2022, 64 percent had a reference person or a spouse or partner who was
self-employed; among the 14.9 percent of families in which either the reference person or a spouse or partner was self-employed,
62.8 percent owned a business.
3
Families with more than one business are classified according to the business with the largest number of employees. A businessthat employs one person, the owner, is classified as a nonemployer business. A family in which the reference person or spouse
reported being self-employed is classified as owning a nonemployer business, even if the family did not directly report owning abusiness. Families whose business interests were solely passive are included in the “business owners with more than five
employees” category.

23

24

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Box 4—continued
Business-owning families in 2022 were wealthier than families without a business. The mean net worthof families without a business was about $570,000 in 2022, while the mean net worth—excluding thevalue of businesses—of families that owned a nonemployer business was nearly $1.1 million. Mean
nonbusiness net worth rises further with the number of employees in the business: families that
owned businesses with two to five employees had $1.6 million in 2022, and those that owned businesses with more than five employees had $4.1 million. Similar patterns hold for mean income. Mean
income among families without a business was $105,500, compared with $173,200 for families that
owned nonemployer businesses and $617,100 for families that owned businesses with more than five
employees. That said, business owners—particularly those with smaller businesses—reported lesscertainty about their earnings than nonbusiness owners.

Table A. Assets and income, by size of business, 2022
Thousands of dollars, except as noted

Business owners
Nonemployer

Two to five
employees

More than five
employees

All others

Share of businesses

52.2%

25.4%

22.4%

n.a.

Business assets (mean)

142.7

959.4

3,834.7

n.a.

Business assets (median)

0.0

141.0

400.0

n.a.

Net worth (mean)

1,069.0

1,557.4

4,068.2

566.1

Net worth (median)

194.0

575.9

1,250.7

155.7

Usual income (mean)

143.1

216.9

542.8

101.4

Usual income (median)

84.8

135.2

237.2

67.0

Actual income (mean)

173.2

232.2

613.3

105.5

Actual income (median)

73.5

135.1

216.9

64.9

Uncertain about income

44.5%

37.9%

34.5%

33.9%

Note: Net worth excludes the value of businesses.
n.a. Not applicable.

25

Debt
Between 2019 and 2022, market interest rates for major types of consumer debt decreasedslightly: The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage ticked down from 4.3 percent
to 4.2 percent, the average new vehicle loan interest rate decreased from 5.5 percent to 4.9 percent, and the average credit card interest rate declined from 15.1 percent to 14.6 percent.25
In the SCF, the share of families holding any type of debt increased between 2019 and 2022, from76.6 percent to 77.4 percent (table 4).26 The conditional median value of debt increased 7 percent to $80,200, and the conditional mean value increased 1 percent to $163,800.

Table 4. Holding and values of debt items, 2019 and 2022 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars, except as noted

Percent holding

Conditional median value

Conditional mean value

2019

2022

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

2019

2022

Percentchange2019–22

76.6

77.4

75.1

80.2

7

163.0

163.8

1

Primary residence

42.1

42.2

156.3

155.6

0

209.6

212.4

1

Other

4.7

4.4

141.4

122.0

−14

238.7

242.5

2

1.5

1.6

2.3

3.0

28

46.8

126.7

171

Education loans

21.5

21.8

25.8

24.5

-5

46.8

46.6

0

Vehicle loans

36.9

34.7

15.2

15.4

1

20.4

21.2

4

Other installment loans

Types of debts

Any debt
Secured by residential property

Lines of credit not secured byresidential property
Installment loans

10.5

18.5

4.4

2.3

−49

23.9

10.3

−57

Credit card balances

45.4

45.2

3.1

2.7

−14

7.3

6.1

−16

Other

5.2

5.1

5.8

4.3

−26

28.6

45.7

60

Note: See appendix B for definitions of liability categories used in the Survey of Consumer Finances.

25

Changes in the mortgage interest rate are measured from March to March of the respective survey years using the contract rate on 30-year fixed-rate conventional home mortgage commitments published by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, while changes in the vehicle loan and credit card interest rates are measured from the first quarter tothe first quarter of the respective survey years using the G.19 data on commercial bank interest rates published by theFederal Reserve Board. These March 2019 to March 2022 measures hide the fact that rates fluctuated between survey
years. Mortgage rates fell to around 2.7 percent in January 2021 before climbing to around 6 percent by the end of2022; rates rose over 2 percentage points between March 2022 and March 2023. Auto loans bottomed out at 4.6 percent in November 2021 and climbed throughout 2022. Credit card interest rates were mostly flat between March 2019and March 2022 but increased steadily throughout the 2022 calendar year.
26
See appendix B for a detailed definition of SCF liability categories.

26

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Debt Holdings by Type
About 42 percent of families in 2022 held debt secured by a primary residence, similar to the percentage in 2019. As discussed in the Nonfinancial Assets section, about 66 percent of families in
2022 owned their principal residence. These numbers imply that almost two-thirds of homeowners
have home-secured debt, while just over one-third of homeowners own their home free of debt.
For those with mortgage debt, the median and mean of home-secured debt were essentially flat
between 2019 and 2022, with the median decreasing a fraction of 1 percent to $155,600 and themean growing 1 percent to $212,400. Stable home-secured debt contrasts strongly with the surge
in the reported market value of primary residences (table 3). This combination implies large gains
in net housing wealth for homeowners (table 2 and box 3).
Credit card debt continued to be the most widely held type of debt in 2022, with more than 45 percent of families reporting a credit card balance after their last payment. Of those with credit carddebt, the median family owed $2,700 in 2022, down a noticeable 14 percent from 2019. In 2022,
just under 35 percent of families held vehicle loans, down 2 percentage points since 2019. Conditional median and mean balances on vehicle loans were largely unchanged between 2019 and2022 at just over $15,000 and $21,000, respectively, despite large increases in conditional
median and mean vehicle values (table 3).
As part of the fiscal support provided during the pandemic, the federal government placed the
majority of education loans in automatic zero-interest forbearance, which was extended throughthe survey field period. Against this backdrop, the fraction of families that had student debt was
stable at 22 percent. In addition, conditional median and mean balances on this debt were largely
unchanged between 2019 and 2022. Median balances decreased from $25,800 to $24,500, andmean balances decreased from $46,800 to $46,600. (For more information on student debt, seebox 5.)In 2022, 18.5 percent of families held other installment loans, up 8 percentage points from 2019.
These loans are often associated with purchases of furniture, appliances, and other durable
goods, although the category also includes medical debt. For the first time in 2022, the SCF asked
explicitly whether families had buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans, which allow a buyer to split thecost of a purchase into (typically four to six) equal installments. The growing popularity of BNPL
explains nearly all the growth in installment loan holdings.27 The conditional median and mean
installment loan values fell between 2019 and 2022, by about $2,000 and $14,000, respectively,
partly because BNPL products are typically used for smaller purchases.

27

In 2022, 7 percent of families reported a balance on a BNPL plan. Among these families, the respective median andmean balances were $300 and $1,400.

27

Box 5. Student Debt
Student debt continued to be the largest source, in dollar terms, of nonmortgage debt owed by families
in 2022 (table 4). The relationship between student debt and economic well-being is theoreticallyambiguous. On the one hand, student borrowing can permit valuable educational investment. Higher
balances tend to reflect more time in school or more expensive education, both of which are often commensurate with better future economic positions. On the other hand, student borrowing can reflect
lower socioeconomic status during schooling that persists into later periods. In addition, higher student
debt balances may crowd out consumption or investment opportunities, either directly or indirectly (via
reduced access to credit).1
Figure A shows the distribution of student debt across usual income quintiles since 2004.2 In eachsurvey year, student debt has been consistently concentrated among higher-income families, with morethan half of the debt belonging to the top 40 percent of the usual income distribution and the bottom
quintile never holding more than 14 percent. Further, beginning in 2016, the share of student debt has
monotonically increased with income within each survey year, with student debt becoming increasingly
skewed toward the top of the distribution over time.

Figure A. Distribution
Share of educationof student
debt,
debt
by quintile
across usualof usual
incomeincomequintiles,
over time
2004–22 surveys

1.0

Share

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
2004

2007

2010
Less than 20

2013
20–39.9

40–59.9

2016
60–79.9

2019

2022

80–100Note: Key identifies usual income quintiles in the order that they appear on the figure, with the lowest quintile on the bottom and thehighest quintile on the top.

1

Student debt tends to peak at younger ages, when such investments may be particularly important but also when other measures of
economic well-being, like income and wealth, are relatively subdued.
2
According to statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Household Debt and Credit Report, total outstanding student
debt more than quadrupled between 2004 and 2022, from $300 billion to $1.6 trillion, and became the largest source of nonmortgage household debt in 2010.

29

Financial Vulnerability
The SCF data can be used to measure a family’s financial debt burden. In addition, the SCF collects various measures of respondents’ recent experiences with credit markets, such as information on credit applications and payment behavior.28

Debt Burden
The ability of individual families to service their loans is a function of many factors, including thelevel of their loan payments and the income and assets they have available to meet those payments. In planning their borrowing, families make assumptions about their future ability to repay
their loans. Problems may occur when events turn out to be contrary to those assumptions. If economic shocks are sufficiently large and prevalent, a broad pattern of default, restraint in spending,and financial distress in the wider economy might ensue.
The SCF data can be used to construct three measures of debt burdens: leverage ratios, debt-toincome ratios, and payment-to-income ratios. Leverage ratios compare the amount of debt toasset values, debt-to-income ratios compare the amount of debt to income levels, and payment-toincome ratios compare payments made on debt relative to income. Each of the three ratios can beconstructed either in aggregate or as a median for debtors.29
All three ratios, both in aggregate and as a median for debtors, decreased between 2019 and2022, implying families faced lower debt burdens, after relatively broad-based increases acrossmeasures from 2016 to 2019 (table 5).30 In 2022, the median leverage ratio for debtors was
29.2 percent, its lowest level since 2001; the median debt-to-income ratio for debtors was
95.1 percent, holding rather steady since 2016 but well below its 2004–13 levels; and the
median payment-to-income ratio for debtors was 13.4 percent, its lowest level ever recorded in
the SCF.31

28

The SCF also asks about families’ shopping and decisionmaking related to borrowing and investing services. Families’
intensity of shopping for borrowing or investing services remained stable at a moderate level from 2019 to 2022. In
general, in 2022, families relied most heavily on the internet, personal connections, and business professionals for bothborrowing and investing information.
29
The aggregate is defined as the total amount of debt held (or payments) divided by the total assets held (or income)among all survey respondents. The median for debtors is defined as the median of each individual family’s ratio among
those carrying debt only.
30
For definitions of the components of table 5, see appendix B.
31
An alternative aggregate version of payment-to-income ratios is the debt service ratio. See Karen Dynan, Kathleen
Johnson, and Karen Pence (2003), “Recent Changes to a Measure of U.S. Household Debt Service,” Federal Reserve
Bulletin, vol. 89 (October), pp. 417–26, https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2003/1003lead.pdf. A discussion of how this measure compares with the one presented here can be found in appendix B.

30

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Table 5. Debt burdens and credit market experiences, 2010–22 surveys
Thousands of 2022 dollars

Measure of debt burden or interaction
with credit markets

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

Aggregate

16.4

14.6

12.1

12.6

10.7

Median for debtors

41.3

38.6

36.4

33.9

29.2

Aggregate

124.8

104.5

92.6

101.2

89.4

Median for debtors

118.8

107.3

95.1

95.7

95.1

Aggregate

14.7

12.0

10.8

11.8

9.9

Median for debtors

18.2

15.9

14.7

15.3

13.4

Fraction with payment-to-income ratio greaterthan 40 percent

10.4

8.2

7.0

7.4

6.5

Turned down for credit (past year)

n.a.

n.a.

10.8

10.7

10.1

Did not apply for credit for fear of being turned
down (past year)

n.a.

n.a.

14.4

12.7

12.9

Either turned down for credit or feared denial(past year)

n.a.

n.a.

20.8

18.4

18.4

Either turned down for credit or feared denial(past five years)

28.3

27.6

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

Late on payments

17.3

14.9

13.5

12.3

12.2

Late on payments 60 days or more

8.1

6.9

5.8

4.6

4.9

Took out a payday loan in past year

3.9

4.2

3.4

2.8

2.1

Declared bankruptcy in past five years

3.6

4.1

3.0

2.0

1.3

Had foreclosure start in past five years

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

.5

.5

Use credit cards for convenience only (that is, do notcarry a balance)

63.0

64.0

57.5

56.0

55.7

Debt burden
Leverage ratio

Debt-to-income ratio

Payment-to-income ratio

Credit market experiences
Credit constrained

Late on payments

Note: See appendix B for a description of measures of debt burden and credit market experiences.
n.a. Not available (relevant data not collected).

An important indicator of potential financial distress is the proportion of families with particularly
large debt burdens. In 2022, 6.5 percent of debtors had payment-to-income ratios greater than
40 percent, again the lowest value on record in the modern SCF.

Financial Vulnerability

Credit Market Experiences
The SCF asks several questions that attempt to capture whether families are credit constrained,
two of which are (1) whether the family was turned down for credit over the past 12 months and(2) whether the family decided not to apply for credit during the past 12 months for fear of being
turned down.32 In 2022, just over 10 percent of families responded “yes” to the first question,and 13 percent responded “yes” to the second.
SCF families’ capacity to stay current on their financial obligations was steady between 2019 and2022 and remained well below 2010–13 levels (table 5). Families that have any debt at the timeof their interview are asked whether they were behind on any of their loan payments in the preceding year. In 2022, 12.2 percent of families reported being late on payments, about the sameas the 12.3 percent in 2019. The percentage of families that reported being 60 days late or more
was 4.9 percent, a small increase since 2019 but a substantial decline since 2010 and 2013.
The SCF asks respondents if they have taken out a payday loan in the past year. Payday loans are
unsecured loans that are typically small and short term, and they generally carry interest rates far
exceeding those for conventional forms of credit. In 2022, about 2 percent of families reported
taking out a payday loan, the lowest rate since the SCF added a question on payday loans
in 2007.
Additional measures of financial distress are whether families have declared bankruptcy or experienced a foreclosure. Amid pandemic-related debt relief and foreclosure protections, in 2022,
1.3 percent of families reported having declared bankruptcy in the past five years, and about
0.5 percent of families reported having foreclosure proceedings brought against properties theyowned in the past five years.33
Finally, between 2019 and 2022, the share of families that used a credit card exclusively for convenience (that is, they did not carry a balance) declined slightly, continuing a downward trend
since 2013.

32

This 12-month time frame differs from analogous questions in surveys before 2016, which had asked families about
their experiences with credit constraints over the past five years. Consequently, table 5 reports only two years of historical data on credit constraints over the past 12 months.
33
The SCF began asking about foreclosure experiences starting with the 2016 survey.

31

33

Appendix A: The Data in This Report
Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) are the basis of the analysis presented in thisreport. The SCF is a triennial interview survey of U.S. families sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with the cooperation of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Since 1992, data for the SCF have been collected by the National Opinion Research Center, aresearch organization at the University of Chicago. Although the majority of the data are collected
between May and December of each survey year, 25 percent of interviews for the 2022 SCF wereconducted between January and April 2023, somewhat elevated from previous surveys.
The majority of statistics included in this report describe the characteristics of “families.” As usedin this report, the SCF definition of “family” is more comparable with the U.S. Census Bureau definition of “households”—which can include one-person families—than with its use of “families.”
Appendix B provides full definitions of “family” for the SCF and the associated family “reference
person,” along with information about how demographic and economic groups are constructed forthis report.
The survey collects information on families’ income before taxes for the calendar year preceding
the survey year. Otherwise, the bulk of the data covers the status of families as of the time of theinterview, including detailed information on their balance sheets and use of financial services aswell as on their pensions, labor force participation, and demographic characteristics. Most of thecore survey questionnaire has changed in only minor ways relevant to this report since 1989.
However, when the questionnaire has been modified at various points to enhance and update thesurvey, every effort has been made to ensure the maximum degree of comparability of the dataover time.
The need to measure financial characteristics imposes special requirements on the sample
design for the survey. The SCF is expected to provide reliable information on both attributes thatare broadly distributed in the population (such as homeownership) and attributes that are highly
concentrated in a relatively small part of the population (such as closely held businesses). To
address this requirement, the SCF employs a sample design consisting of two parts: a standard,geographically based random sample and a special oversample of relatively wealthy families. For
the 2022 survey, the geographically based random sample was redesigned to oversample families
in particular racial and ethnic groups to measure the attributes of these families more precisely(see appendix B for details). Weights are used to combine information from the samples to construct estimates for the full population. In the 2022 survey, 4,602 families were interviewed, andin the 2019 survey, 5,783 families were interviewed.

34

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

This report draws principally on the final data from the 2022 and 2019 surveys. To provide alarger context, some information is also included from the final versions of earlier surveys.34
Differences between estimates from earlier surveys as reported here and as reported in previous
SCF articles are attributable to additional statistical processing, correction of minor data errors,
revisions to the survey weights, conceptual changes in the definitions of variables used in thearticles, and adjustments for inflation. In this report, all dollar amounts from the SCF are adjusted
to 2022 dollars using the “current methods” version of the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U-RS).
The principal detailed tables (tables 1 through 4) describing income, net worth, and asset anddebt holdings focus on the percentage of various groups that have such items and the median andmean holding for those that have them.35 Generally, when one deals with data that exhibit verylarge values for a relatively small part of the population—as is the case for many of the items considered in this report—estimates of the median are often statistically less sensitive to such outliers than are estimates of the mean. At the same time, means are generally more useful for comparing across population subgroups, because every member of the group contributes equally tothe overall average.
One liability of using the median as a descriptive device is that medians are not additive—that is,
the sum of the medians of two items for the same population is not generally equal to the medianof the sum (for example, median assets minus median liabilities will generally not equal median
net worth). In contrast, means for a common population are additive. In the context of this report,
where a comparable median and mean are given, the gain or loss of the mean relative to themedian may usually be taken as indicative of the relative change at the top of the distribution; forexample, when the mean exhibits larger growth than the median, it is typically taken to indicatethat the values in the upper part of the distribution rose more than those in the lower part of the
distribution.
To provide a measure of the statistical significance of the developments discussed in this report,
standard errors caused by sampling and imputation for missing data are given for selected estimates. Space limits prevent the inclusion of the standard errors for all estimates. Although thestatistical significance of the results generally is not addressed, the report highlights findings thatare significant or are interesting in a broader context. Standard errors for all estimates in tables 1
and 2 are available on the SCF website.

34
35

Additional information about the survey is available on the Board’s website at https://doi.org/10.17016/datasets.001.
The median of a distribution is defined as the value at which equal parts of the population considered have values thatare larger or smaller.

35

Appendix B: Survey Procedures andStatistical Measures
The 2022 data used here are derived from the final internal version of the survey information.
Data from this survey, suitably altered to protect the privacy of respondents, along with additional
tabulations of data from the surveys beginning with 1989, are expected to be available in
October 2023 on the Federal Reserve Board’s website.36
As part of the general reconciliations required for this report, the survey data were compared withmany external estimates. One particularly important comparison is between the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Federal Reserve’s Statistical Release Z.1, “Financial Accounts of
the United States,” for the household sector.37 This comparison suggests that when the definitions of the variables in the two sources are adjusted to a common conceptual basis, the estimates of totals in the two systems tend to be close. The data series in the SCF and in Statistical
Release Z.1 usually show very similar growth rates.38 In general, the median values for income
and net worth in the SCF are most comparable with values in other household surveys because of
the special design of the SCF sample.39

36

Data from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances as well as links to the data used in this report for earlier periods andlinks to working papers describing statistical methodologies are available on the Board’s website at https://doi.org/
10.17016/datasets.001.
37
See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2023), Statistical Release Z.1, “Financial Accounts of theUnited States” (September 8), https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1; and Michael Batty, Jesse Bricker, Joseph
Briggs, Elizabeth Holmquist, Susan McIntosh, Kevin Moore, Eric Nielsen, Sarah Reber, Molly Shatto, Kamila Sommer,
Tom Sweeney, and Alice Henriques Volz (2019), “Introducing the Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States,”
Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-017 (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,
March), https://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2019.017.
38
For details on how these comparisons are structured and the results of comparisons for earlier surveys, see Alice M.
Henriques and Joanne W. Hsu (2013), “Analysis of Wealth Using Micro and Macro Data: A Comparison of the Survey ofConsumer Finances and Flow of Funds Accounts,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-46 (Washington:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May), https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2013/201346/
201346pap.pdf; and Lisa J. Dettling, Sebastian J. Devlin-Foltz, Jacob Krimmel, Sarah J. Pack, and Jeffrey P. Thompson(2015), “Comparing Micro and Macro Sources for Household Accounts in the United States: Evidence from the Survey ofConsumer Finances,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-086 (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, June), http://dx.doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2015.086.
39
Family income measures help highlight the issues that can arise when comparing SCF medians and means against
other survey estimates. Over the 2019–22 period, estimates of inflation-adjusted household income for the previous
year from the Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Census Bureau show an increase in both the median (2.1 percent) and the mean (4.4 percent). The change in the median is slightly smaller than the corresponding increase in the
SCF, whereas the change in the mean is notably smaller. The medians for 2022 are similar in the SCF ($70,300) andthe CPS ($75,900). Typically, the SCF shows a higher level of mean income than does the CPS; for 2022, the SCF yields
an estimate of $141,900, while the CPS yields an estimate of $110,600. The two surveys differ in their definitions of
the units of observation and in other aspects of their methodologies. Most relevant is the fact that a CPS household
can contain more people than a corresponding SCF family. If the SCF measure is expanded to include the income ofhousehold members not included in the SCF definition of a family, the median rises 3.1 percent over the period (from$72,400 in 2019 to $74,700 in 2022), while the mean increases 14.7 percent (from $127,600 in 2019 to $146,300
in 2022). The substantial difference in means is likely largely the result of the truncation of large values in the CPS data
above a certain amount, which is done with the intent of minimizing the possibility that participants in that survey might
be identifiable.

36

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Adjustment for Inflation
In this report, unless otherwise specified, all dollar amounts from the SCF are adjusted to 2022
dollars using the “current methods” version of the consumer price index (CPI) for all urban consumers. In an ongoing effort to improve accuracy, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has introduced several revisions to its CPI methodology. The current-methods index attempts to extend
these changes to earlier years to obtain a series as consistent as possible with current practices
in the official CPI.40 Table B.1 includes the adjustments made to assets and liabilities to convert
them to 2022 dollars and to adjust family income for the preceding calendar year, 2021, to 2022
dollars.
Table B.1. Inflation adjustment factors to 2022 dollars for assets and debts and income
Adjustment factor for assets and debts in the survey year

Adjustment factor for income in the calendar year
before the survey year2010

1.36581.38792013

1.27281.29212016

1.2334

1.24932019

1.1592

1.18022022

1.00001.0809Survey year

Definition of “Family”
The definition of “family” used throughout this report differs from that typically used in other government studies. In the SCF, a household unit is divided into a primary economic unit (PEU)—thefamily—and everyone else in the household. The PEU is intended to be the economically dominant
single person or couple (whether married or living together as partners) and all other persons in
the household who are financially interdependent with that economically dominant person
or couple.
This report also designates a reference person within the PEU, not to convey a judgment about
how an individual family is structured but as a means of organizing the data consistently. For
example, the age and educational classifications ascribed to families throughout this report
describe the age and education of the reference person. If a couple is economically dominant in
the PEU, the reference person is the male in a mixed-sex couple or the older person in a same-sex
couple. If a single person is economically dominant, that person is designated as the family reference person in this report. Note that the term “reference person” is a new descriptor as of the2019 survey, replacing the outdated “household head” terminology used in previous surveys.

40

For technical information about the construction of this index, see Kenneth J. Stewart and Stephen B. Reed (1999),“Consumer Price Index Research Series Using Current Methods, 1978–98,” Monthly Labor Review, vol. 122 (June),
pp. 29–38.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

Asset and Liability Categories
The specific concepts of asset and liability categories in the SCF are necessarily tied to the survey
question wording and associated field interviewer instructions, both of which can be found in the
SCF codebook for the year(s) in question.41 What follows is a general exposition of the asset andliability categories reported in the tables.
Transaction accounts include checking, savings, and money market deposit accounts; money
market funds (MMFs); call or cash accounts at brokerages; and prepaid debit cards. Call accounts
include those that hold money received from the sale of securities until the money is reinvested.
The savings account category includes a small number of tax-preferred accounts such as medicalor health savings accounts and Coverdell or 529 education accounts. Prepaid debit cards, collected in the SCF for the first time in 2016, include reloadable prepaid debit cards and government benefit cards.
Certificates of deposit are accounts held for a set period of time that must be cashed or renewedat the maturity date. Savings bonds include only U.S. government issues; recent series include
EE, HH, and I, and older bonds may be series E and H. Other bonds include only those held
directly (not part of a managed investment account or bond fund) and include corporate andmortgage-backed bonds; federal, state, and local government bonds; and foreign bonds. Stocks
include publicly traded stocks that are directly held—that is, corporate equities not held as part ofa managed investment account, mutual fund, or retirement account.
Pooled investment funds include stock funds, tax-free bond funds, government bond funds, otherbond funds, and any combinations thereof but exclude MMFs and indirectly held mutual funds.
These funds include all other types of directly held pooled investments, such as traditional
open-end and closed-end mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, real estate investment trusts, andhedge funds.
Retirement accounts include individual retirement accounts, Keogh accounts, and certain
employer-sponsored accounts, such as 401(k), 403(b), and thrift savings accounts from current or
past jobs; other current job plans from which loans or withdrawals can be made; and accounts
from past jobs from which the family expects to receive the account balance in the future. Thisdefinition of employer-sponsored plans is intended to confine the analysis to accounts that areportable across jobs and for which families will ultimately have the option to withdraw the balance.
Usually, such accounts may be invested in virtually any asset, including stocks, bonds, pooled

41

Codebooks for each SCF wave can be found on the Board’s website at https://doi.org/10.17016/datasets.001. SAS
code that generates the asset and liability categories is available on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.
gov/econres/files/bulletin.macro.txt. A web-based application for analyzing SCF data can be found at http://
sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=scfcomb2022.

37

38

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

investment funds, options, and real estate. In principle, employer-sponsored plans may beinvested in a similarly broad way, but, in practice, a person’s choices for investment are sometimes limited to a narrower set of assets.42
Cash value life insurance is the current (nonzero) value of any life insurance policies with a cash
value that can be withdrawn. The survey measures the value of such policies according to theircurrent cash value, not their death benefit. In this report, the cash value is included as an asset
only when the cash value at the time of the interview was nonzero. This designation excludes termlife insurance policies, which provide only a death benefit.
Other managed assets include personal annuities and trusts with an equity interest and managed
investment accounts. Annuities may be those in which the family has an equity interest in theasset or in which the family possesses an entitlement only to a stream of income. The wealth figures in this report include only the annuities in which the family has an equity interest.43 The
trusts or managed investment accounts included in other managed assets are those in whichfamilies have an equity interest and for which components were not separately reported. Typically,such accounts are those in which the ownership is complicated or the management is undertaken
by a professional.44
Other financial assets include oil and gas leases, futures contracts, royalties, proceeds from lawsuits or estates in settlement, cryptocurrency, and loans made to others. One specific financial
asset excluded from this category is employment-related stock options.45 Because such options
are typically not publicly traded or their execution is otherwise constrained, their value is uncertain
until the exercise date; until then, meaningful valuation would require complex assumptions about
the future behavior of stock prices.

42

Although tax-deferred retirement assets are clearly an important element in retirement planning, families may hold avariety of other assets intended, at least in part, to finance retirement. Two common and often particularly important
types of retirement plans are not included in the assets described in this section: Social Security (the federally funded
Old-Age, Survivors,’ and Disability Insurance program (OASDI)) and employer-sponsored defined-benefit plans. OASDI iswell described elsewhere, and it covers the great majority of the population. (See Social Security Administration, “Online
Social Security Handbook: Your Basic Guide to the Social Security Programs,” Publication 65-008, https://www.ssa.gov/
OP_Home/handbook/handbook.html.) The retirement income provided by defined-benefit plans is typically based on
workers’ salaries and years of work with an employer, a group of employers, or a union. Unfortunately, future income
streams from OASDI and defined-benefit plans cannot be translated directly into a current value because valuation
depends critically on assumptions about future events and conditions—work decisions, earnings, inflation rates, discount rates, mortality, and so on—and no widely agreed-upon standards exist for making these assumptions.
43
In 2022, 4.8 percent of families reported having any type of annuity, and, of these families, 74.4 percent reported
having an equity interest.
44
In 2022, 92.9 percent of families with trusts or managed investment accounts had an equity interest in such an
account. The survey encourages respondents who have trusts or managed investment accounts held in relatively
common investments to report the components in the corresponding questions in the survey. Of the 6.0 percent of families that reported having any kind of trust or managed investment account in 2022, 61.3 percent of them reported atleast one of the component assets separately. Of families that detailed the components in 2022, 90.3 percent reported
some type of financial asset, 16.6 percent reported a primary residence, 12.5 percent reported other real estate,
4.6 percent reported a business, and 5.1 percent reported another type of asset.
45
Stock options are generally excluded in the accounting in this report, except for stock option retirement plans, which areincluded in pensions.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

Vehicles include cars, vans, sport utility vehicles, trucks, motor homes, recreational vehicles,
motorcycles, boats, airplanes, and helicopters.46 Primary residences include mobile homes andtheir sites, the parts of farms and ranches not used for farming or ranching business, condominiums, cooperatives, townhouses, other single-family homes, and other permanent dwellings.
Other residential property includes second homes, time shares, one- to four-family rental properties, and other types of residential properties. It also includes outstanding balances on loans thatthe family may have made to finance the sale of properties the family previously owned and thatare still owed to the family.
Nonresidential real estate includes the following types of properties unless they are owned
through a business: commercial property, rental property with five or more units, farmland andranch land, undeveloped land, and all other types of nonresidential real estate. Most often, nonresidential real estate properties are functionally more like a business than a residential property.
They may have several owners, they are typically worth a considerable amount, and they often
carry large mortgages, which appear to be paid from the revenues from the property, not thefamily’s other income. As in the case of privately owned businesses, the value of the property inthis analysis is taken to be the net value.
Business equity includes net worth in the following forms of business: sole proprietorships, limited partnerships, other types of partnerships, S corporations and other types of corporations thatare not publicly traded, limited liability companies, and other types of private businesses. If thefamily lived on a farm or ranch used at least in part for agricultural business, then the value ofthat part, net of the corresponding share of associated debts, is included with other businessassets. In the survey, self-employment status and business ownership are independently
determined.
Debt secured by residential property consists of first-lien and junior-lien mortgages and homeequity lines of credit (HELOCs) secured by the primary residence. For the purposes of this report,
first- and junior-lien mortgages consist only of closed-end loans—that is, loans typically with a onetime extension of credit, a set frequency of repayments, and a required repayment size that may
be fixed or vary over time in accordance with a pre-specified agreement or with changes in a given
market interest rate.47 As a type of open-ended credit, HELOCs typically allow credit extensions at
the borrower’s discretion subject to a prearranged limit and allow repayments at the borrower’s discretion subject to a prearranged minimum size and frequency.

46

Of families owning any type of vehicle in 2022, 99.7 percent had a car, van, sport utility vehicle, motorcycle, or truck.
The remaining types of vehicles were held by 10.4 percent of families.
47
Of all families, 40.6 percent had a first-lien mortgage in 2022 (39.6 percent in 2019), 1.2 percent had a junior-lienmortgage (1.5 percent in 2019), 6.9 percent had a HELOC (6.9 percent in 2019), and 3.5 percent had a HELOC with an
outstanding balance (4.5 percent in 2019).

39

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Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Lines of credit not secured by residential property are any lines of credit except HELOCs and borrowing on credit cards.
The term “installment loan” describes closed-end consumer loans—that is, loans that typicallyhave fixed payments and a fixed term. The most common examples are education loans; automobile loans; and loans for furniture, appliances, and other durable goods. Other installment loans
include all closed-end consumer loans that are not for education or a vehicle—that is, loans thattypically have fixed payments and a fixed term. Beginning with the 2022 survey, balances on buy
now, pay later payment plans—a type of short-term loan, usually for consumer goods, that allows
an individual to spread payment for a purchase over several installments—are included with otherinstallment loans.
Credit card balances consist of balances on bank-type cards (such as Visa, MasterCard, and Discover as well as Optima and other American Express cards that routinely allow holders to carry abalance), store cards or charge accounts, care cards, gasoline company cards, so-called travel andentertainment cards (such as American Express cards that do not routinely allow holders to carrya balance and Diners Club), other credit cards, and revolving store accounts that are not tied to acredit card. Balances exclude purchases made after paying the most recent bill.
The “other” debt category comprises loans on cash value life insurance policies, loans against
pension accounts, borrowing on margin accounts, and a miscellaneous category largely composedof personal loans not explicitly categorized elsewhere.
Finally, the SCF measure of liabilities excludes debt owed by family-owned businesses and debt
owed on nonresidential real estate; in this report, such debt is netted against the corresponding assets.

Measures of Debt Burden and Credit Market Experiences
The SCF includes several questions designed to capture information about respondents’ debt burdens and interactions with credit markets. The specific concepts addressed in the SCF are necessarily tied to the survey question wording and associated field interviewer instructions, which canbe found in the SCF codebook for the year(s) in question.48 What follows is a general exposition of
the debt burden and credit market experience measures reported in the tables.
Leverage ratios compare the total of all debts with the total of all assets. The aggregate version ofthis measure is the sum of all debts for all SCF respondents, divided by the sum of all assets for48

Codebooks for each SCF wave can be found on the Board’s website at https://doi.org/10.17016/datasets.001.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

SCF respondents. The median for debtors is the median of each individual family’s leverage ratio
and is calculated for those with positive values of total debt only.
The aggregate debt-to-income ratio is the sum of liabilities for all SCF respondents, divided by the
total income for all SCF respondents. The median for debtors is the 50th percentile of an individual family’s debt-to-income ratios and is calculated for those with positive values of total
debt only.
Payment-to-income ratios measure total debt payments relative to the total income.49 The aggregate version of this measure is the sum of all debt payments for all SCF respondents, divided bytotal income for all SCF respondents. The median for debtors is the 50th percentile of an individual family’s payment-to-income ratios and is calculated for those with positive values of total
debt only. For the purposes of the calculation of payment-to-income ratios, the relatively small
share of families with income that was less than or equal to zero are assigned $100 of income in2022 dollars.
The aggregate measure of the payment-to-income ratio referenced in this report can differ fromother published measures that are conceptually similar, such as the debt service ratio, for several
reasons.50 First, the debt payments included in each measure are different. The aggregate-levelmeasure includes only debts originated by depositories, finance companies, and other financial
institutions, whereas the survey includes, in principle, debts from all sources. Second, theaggregate-level measure uses an estimate of disposable personal income from the national
income and product accounts for the period concurrent with the estimated payments as thedenominator of the ratio, whereas the survey measure uses total before-tax income reported bysurvey families for the preceding year; the differences in these two income measures are complex. Third, the payments in the aggregate-level measure are estimated using a formula thatentails many assumptions about minimum payments and the distribution of loan terms at any
given time; the survey measure of payments is directly asked of the survey respondents but may
also include payments of taxes and insurance on real estate loans. Fourth, because the survey
measures of payments and income are based on the responses of a sample of respondents, they
may be affected both by sampling error and by various types of response errors. As mentioned
earlier in this report, the survey income measure tracks the most comparable measure of incomein the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS).
49

The definition of payment-to-income ratio in the SCF includes only debt payments, not payments on leases or rental payments. That said, the SCF collects information on vehicle lease payments and rent on primary residences. Therefore,
the SCF can be used to create a broader measure of a family’s payments that includes leases and rental payments.
See, for example, Andrew C. Chang, Joanne W. Hsu, Sarah J. Pack, and Michael G. Palumbo (2018), “Where’s the Money
Going? The Importance of Accounting for Rent Payments in Measuring a Household’s Financial Obligations,” FEDS Notes(Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, June 20), https://doi.org/10.17016/23807172.2213.
50
See Karen Dynan, Kathleen Johnson, and Karen Pence (2003), “Recent Changes to a Measure of U.S. Household Debt
Service,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 89 (October), pp. 417–26, www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2003/
1003lead.pdf.

41

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Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

The SCF asks multiple questions intended to capture whether families are credit constrained,
which is broadly defined as having difficulty accessing credit.51 One question asks the respondent
whether the respondent or the spouse or partner applied for particular types of credit in the past
year. Among those that answer in the affirmative, a follow-up question asks the respondent
whether a lender declined an application for credit or provided less credit than was sought at any
point in the past year. Among those that answer in the negative, a follow-up question probes therationale behind the decision not to apply for credit in the past year and, among other choices,offers “you did not think you would get approved” as a possibility. A combination of these questions is used to measure overall credit constraints.
Delinquency on debt obligations is captured by asking families that have any debt at the time of
their interview whether they have been behind in any of their loan payments in the preceding year.
The survey asks if respondents have been behind at all and if they have been behind in payments
for 60 or more days.
Payday loans are defined as loans that are meant to be repaid in full out of the respondent’s next
paycheck; they are unsecured loans that are typically small, short term, and carry above-averageinterest rates.
Bankruptcy behavior over the past five years is based on a series of retrospective questions thatask whether the respondent or the partner or spouse has ever declared bankruptcy and, if so, themost recent year.
Foreclosure experience over the past five years is based on a series of retrospective questions
that ask whether the respondent or the partner or spouse has ever had a foreclosure proceedingbrought against an owned property and, if so, the most recent year.
Finally, convenience use of credit cards is determined using questions on whether a respondent
had positive balances after the most recent payment for bank-type cards (such as Visa, MasterCard, and Discover as well as Optima and other American Express cards that routinely allow
holders to carry a balance), store cards, gasoline company cards, and other credit cards.

Percentiles of the Distributions of Income and Net WorthThroughout this report, references are made to various percentile groups of the distributions ofincome or net worth. For a given characteristic, a percentile can be used to define a family’s rank
relative to other families. For example, the 10th percentile of the distribution of usual income is51

Before 2016, these questions had asked families about their experiences over the past five years, rather than over the
past year.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

the amount of income received by a family for which less than 10 percent of other families havelower incomes and 90 percent have higher incomes. Table B.2 includes the percentiles of the distributions of income and net worth used to define the income and net worth groups in tables 1
and 2 and boxes 1 through 4 in the report.
The groups that are created when a distribution is divided at every 10th percentile are commonlyreferred to as deciles. Similarly, when a distribution is divided at every 20th (25th) percentile, thegroups are known as quintiles (quartiles). Families in the first income decile, for example, arethose with income below the 10th percentile.

Table B.2. Distribution of usual income and net worth by survey year, selected percentiles
2022 dollars

Item

Survey year
2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

20

32,20033,30029,70031,20032,90034,60040

55,20055,50051,60053,70055,50059,50050

71,40069,40064,60068,10070,80073,400Percentile of usual income

60

88,30086,10080,40085,70087,30091,90080

140,500

138,800

133,100

137,400

147,500

153,100

90

198,700

208,200

196,900

218,500

218,400

245,400

Percentile of net worth
25

20,20011,300

11,20012,50014,30027,10050

172,600

105,500

103,400

120,000

141,100

192,900

75

533,500

412,100

403,800

455,200

468,100

658,90090

1,302,700

1,300,900

1,198,600

1,463,200

1,414,500

1,938,000

Racial and Ethnic Classifications
In this report, for continuity, we have classified families based on the survey respondent’s selfidentified race and ethnicity. Before 2022, the SCF only collected the race and ethnicity of thesurvey respondent. Beginning with the 2022 survey, race and ethnicity were collected for both the
respondent and the spouse or partner. Using this classification instead of the reference person’s
race has only a small effect on the race category assigned to families.
For greater comparability with previous surveys, the data reported in this report group respondents
into four classifications based on their responses to the racial identification question: white nonHispanic, Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic or Latino, and other or multiple race. The “other or multiple
race” classification includes (1) respondents identifying as Asian, American Indian, Alaska Native,
Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or other race; and (2) all respondents reporting more than one

43

44

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

racial identification.52 Due to the racial and ethnic oversampling built into the survey design for2022, tables 1 and 2 of this report break out, for the first time, Asian families as a separate
racial/ethnic classification. Asian families were nearly 4 percent of 2022 families, and “other(non-Asian) or multiple race” families were more than 8 percent.
The questions underlying the method of classification used in the survey were changed in both1998 and 2004. Starting in 1998, SCF respondents were allowed to report more than one racial
identification; in surveys before then, only one response was recorded. For maximum comparability
with earlier data, respondents reporting multiple racial identifications were asked to report theirstrongest racial identification first. In data reported in this report, respondents reporting multiple
racial identifications in the surveys starting with 1998 are classified as “other or multiple race.” In
the 2022 SCF, 7.2 percent of respondents reported more than one racial identification, up from
6.7 percent in 2019, 6.1 percent in 2013, 5.4 percent in 2007, and 2.3 percent in 2004. The
public release data set includes the ethnic identification and racial identification variables,
enabling the construction of alternative classifications.
Beginning with the 2004 survey, the question on racial identification is preceded by a question onwhether respondents consider themselves Hispanic or Latino in culture or origin; previously, such
ethnic identification was captured only to the extent that it was reported as a response to thequestion on racial identification. The classifications in this report ignore the information on ethnic
identification available in the surveys since 2004, again for greater comparability with earlier SCF
data. Of those who responded affirmatively to the question on Hispanic or Latino identification in
2022, 93.8 percent also reported “Hispanic or Latino” as one of their racial identifications, and81.6 percent reported it as their primary racial identification. Because the question on Hispanic or
Latino ethnicity precedes the one on racial identification in the surveys from 2004 through 2022,
the answer to the second of these two questions may have been influenced by the answer tothe first.53
In 2022, the survey asked for the first time about the country of origin and number of years livingin the U.S. for both the respondent and spouse or partner. This information is included in the
microdata but is not detailed in this report.

52

Articles for years before the 2016 SCF reported data that classified all families into two groups: white non-Hispanic andnon-white or Hispanic. The definition for white non-Hispanic in this report is consistent with that used in earlier years,
while the non-white or Hispanic group has been split into three classifications (Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic or Latino,and other or multiple race).
53
For a comprehensive discussion of standards for defining race and ethnicity, see Executive Office of the President, Officeof Management and Budget (2000), “Provisional Guidance on the Implementation of the 1997 Standards for Federal
Data on Race and Ethnicity,” guidance document (Washington: EOP, December 15).

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

This all said, evolution of the racial and ethnic composition of the survey population represents
important context for interpreting statistics describing the experiences of families by race or ethnicity over time. Table B.3 displays the share of the SCF population each racial or ethnic group has
represented in each survey since 2007 using current survey classifications.

Table B.3. Composition of SCF families by race or ethnicity of the respondent, by survey year
Percent

Race or ethnicity of respondent

Survey year
2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

White non-Hispanic

70.7

67.5

67.2

64.7

64.9

66.8

Black non-Hispanic

11.7

13.0

13.3

14.6

14.2

11.5

Hispanic or Latino

8.6

9.7

9.6

10.2

9.6

9.4

Other or multiple race

9.0

9.9

9.9

10.5

11.3

12.3

Note: SCF is Survey of Consumer Finances.

Classifications of Educational Attainment
In this report, the educational attainment of a family refers to the highest degree obtained by thereference person. Beginning with the 2016 survey, the SCF modified its educational attainment
question to align the SCF more closely with other household surveys, including the census and
CPS. For surveys before 2016, respondents were asked to list the highest grade of school or yearof college completed, and follow-up questions asked the respondent about the type of degree
obtained. Starting with the 2016 survey, the first educational attainment question asks about thehighest degree obtained, and follow-up questions ask respondents who report a high school
degree whether it was obtained by getting a General Educational Development certificate or completing another equivalency program. Follow-up questions also ask respondents who report somecollege about the number of years of college. It is possible this change may have promptedchanges in reporting, although the educational attainment of SCF families was similar to that of
CPS families in both 2013 and 2016.
Similar to race and ethnicity, evolution of the educational composition of the survey population represents important context for interpreting statistics describing the experiences of families by educational attainment over time. Table B.4 displays the share of the SCF population each educationgroup has represented in each survey since 2007 using current survey classifications.

45

46

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Table B.4. Composition of SCF families by educational attainment of the reference person,by survey year
Percent

Survey year

Education of reference person

2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

No high school diploma

13.5

12.0

11.0

12.7

10.7

9.2

High school diploma

32.9

32.2

31.3

26.0

24.5

23.7

Some college

24.5

25.1

25.7

27.3

28.5

27.1

College degree

29.1

30.8

32.0

34.0

36.3

40.1

Note: SCF is Survey of Consumer Finances.

Age Classifications
In this report, the age of a family refers to the age of the reference person. Similar to race andethnicity, as well as educational attainment, evolution of the age composition of the survey population represents important context for interpreting statistics describing the experiences of families
by age over time. Table B.5 displays the share of the SCF population each age group has represented in each survey since 2007 using current survey classifications.

Table B.5. Composition of SCF families by age of reference person, by survey year
Percent

Age of reference person (years)

Survey year
2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

Less than 35

21.6

21.0

20.8

20.3

20.9

20.0

35–44

19.6

18.2

17.3

16.8

16.6

17.0

45–54

20.8

21.1

19.6

18.3

17.2

16.4

55–64

16.8

17.5

18.7

19.2

18.8

18.4

65–74

10.5

11.5

12.9

14.1

15.3

16.1

75 or more

10.6

10.7

10.7

11.2

11.3

12.0

Note: SCF is Survey of Consumer Finances.

The Sampling Techniques
The survey is expected to provide a core set of data on family income, assets, and liabilities. The
major aspects of the sample design that address this requirement have been largely constantsince 1989. The SCF combines two techniques for random sampling. First, a standard multistage,area-probability sample (a geographically based random sample) is selected to provide good coverage of characteristics, such as homeownership, vehicles, and checking accounts, that arebroadly distributed in the population.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

In 2022, the survey adjusted its sampling approach for the area-probability sample to oversample
households predicted to be Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, or Asian.54 The sampling rate for Black
non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and Asian households was about 50 percent higher than a random sample
solely based on geography.
Second, a supplemental sample is selected to disproportionately include wealthy families, whichhold a relatively large share of such thinly held assets as noncorporate businesses and taxexempt bonds. Called the “list sample,” this group is drawn from a list of statistical records
derived from tax returns. These records are used under strict rules governing confidentiality, therights of potential respondents to refuse participation in the survey, and the types of informationthat can be made available. Persons listed by Forbes magazine as being among the wealthiest
400 people in the U.S. are excluded from sampling.55
Of the 4,602 interviews completed for the 2022 SCF, 3,298 were from the area-probability
sample, and 1,304 were from the list sample; for 2019, 4,291 were from the area-probability
sample, and 1,492 were from the list sample. Table B.6 contains the number of families represented in total by the surveys considered in this report.
Overall population growth between 2019 and2022 was 1.6 percent, according to figures

Table B.6. Number of families represented in
the SCF, by survey year

from the U.S. Census Bureau, similar to theMillions

1.5 percent growth rate between 2016 andYear

Number of families represented

2019. Also according to U.S. Census Bureau

2007

116.1

estimates, the number of households

2010

117.6

2013

122.5

2016

126.0

2019

128.6

2022

131.3

increased 1.9 percent between 2019 and2022—slightly below the rate of household
formation between 2016 and 2019, which
was 2.1 percent. With the population growing

Note: SCF is Survey of Consumer Finances.

at a slightly slower rate than household formation, the average number of persons perhousehold barely changed, from 2.55 people
in 2019 to 2.54 in 2022.

54

For more information, see Kevin B. Moore and Karen M. Pence (2021), “Improving the Measurement of Racial andEthnic Disparities in the Survey of Consumer Finances,” FEDS Notes (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System, June 21), https://doi.org/10.17016/2380-7172.2945.
55
For more information, see Jesse Bricker, Alice Henriques, and Kevin Moore (2017), “Updates to the Sampling of Wealthy
Families in the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-114 (Washington: Boardof Governors of the Federal Reserve System, November), https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2017.114.

47

48

Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

The Interviews
Although questions have been modified and new questions added over time, the core of the survey
questionnaire has changed in only minor ways since 1989. Changes to the questionnaire generally
include instances in which the structure was altered to accommodate changes in financial behaviors; changes in types of financial arrangements available to families, including those with businesses that are not publicly traded; and changes in regulations covering data collection. In 2016,
interview sections on educational attainment, education loans, payment methods, and financial
institutions were revised, and additional questions addressing financial literacy among respondents, parental educational attainment, and decisions under hypothetical financial situations havealso been included.56 For all changes, every effort has been made to ensure the maximum degreeof comparability of the data over time. Except where noted in the report, the data are highly comparable over time.
The generosity of families in giving their time for interviews has been crucial to the ongoing success of the SCF. In the 2022 SCF, the median interview length was about 110 minutes; theincrease over the 2019 SCF (100 minutes) was primarily due to the addition of a short module
about experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.57 However, in some particularly complicated cases, the amount of time needed was substantially more than three hours. The
role of the interviewers in this effort is also critical. Without their dedication and perseverance, thesurvey would not be possible.
The SCF interviews were conducted largely between the months of May and December in eachsurvey year, with about one-fourth of interviews conducted in the first four months of the next calendar year, by the National Opinion Research Center, a social science and survey research organization at the University of Chicago. For the first time, in 2022 the majority of interviews were conducted by telephone, although in-person interviews were allowed if that method was preferred by
the respondent. Each interviewer used a program running on a laptop computer to administer thesurvey and collect the data.
The use of computer-assisted personal interviewing has the great advantage of enforcing systematic collection of data across all cases. The computer program developed to collect the data for
the SCF was tailored to allow the collection of partial information in the form of ranges whenever a
respondent either did not know or did not want to reveal an exact dollar figure.

56

A detailed list of all changes to the questionnaire in 2016 is available on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/files/2016_scf_changes.txt.
57
The module added for 2022 asks about families’ experiences in the COVID-19 pandemic related to employment, financial struggles, government transfers, effect on childcare, and health outcomes. An upcoming FEDS Notes article discusses these questions and the results from the 2022 SCF and can be found on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/default.htm.

Appendix B: Survey Procedures and Statistical Measures

The response rate in the area-probability sample is higher than in the list sample. In 2022, about
42 percent of households selected for the area-probability sample completed interviews, downfrom 60 percent in 2019. The list sample has targets for completed cases by wealth stratum;
thus, the response rates for this part of the sample are achieved somewhat by construction. The
overall response rate in 2022 for the list sample was 27 percent, slightly below the rate in 2019.
The strata containing the likely wealthiest families, about half of the list sample, had a response
rate around 20 percent, also down slightly compared with 2019.

Weighting
To provide a measure of the frequency with which families similar to the sample families could be
expected to be found in the population of all families, an analysis weight is computed for eachcase, accounting for both the systematic properties of the sample design and differential patternsof nonresponse. The SCF response rates are low by the standards of some other major government surveys, and analysis of the data confirms that the tendency to refuse participation is highly
correlated with net worth. However, unlike other surveys, which almost certainly also have differential nonresponse by wealthy households, the SCF has the means to adjust for such nonresponse.
A major part of SCF research is devoted to the evaluation of nonresponse and adjustments for
nonresponse in the analysis weights of the survey.58

Sources of Error
Errors may be introduced into survey results at many stages. Sampling error—the variability
expected in estimates based on a sample instead of a census—is a particularly important sourceof error. Such error can be reduced either by increasing the size of a sample or, as is done in the
SCF, by designing the sample to reduce important sources of variability. Sampling error can be
estimated, and, for this report, we use replication methods to do so.
Replication methods draw samples, called replicates, from the set of actual respondents in a waythat incorporates the important dimensions of the original sample design. In the SCF, weights werecomputed for all of the cases in each of the replicates.59 Every value for which standard errors areprovided in this report is a weighted statistic estimated using the replicate samples. To estimate
the overall standard error, a measure of the variability of these estimates is combined with ameasure of the variability because of imputation for missing data.

58

The weights used in this report are adjusted for differential rates of nonresponse across groups. See Arthur B. Kennickell (1999), “Revisions to the SCF Weighting Methodology: Accounting for Race/Ethnicity and Homeownership,”working paper (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January), https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/files/weightrevision.pdf.
59
See Arthur B. Kennickell (2000), “Revisions to the Variance Estimation Procedure for the SCF,” working paper (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October), https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/
files/variance.pdf.

49

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Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022

Other errors include those that interviewers may introduce by failing to follow the survey protocol
or misunderstanding a respondent’s answers. SCF interviewers are given lengthy, project-specifictraining and ongoing coaching to minimize such problems. Respondents may introduce error byinterpreting a question in a sense different from that intended by the survey. For the SCF, extensive pretesting of questions and thorough review of the data tend to reduce this source of error.
Nonresponse—either complete nonresponse to the survey or nonresponse to selected items
within the survey—may be another important source of error. As noted in more detail previously,
the SCF uses weighting to adjust for differential nonresponse to the survey. To address missing
information on individual questions within the interview, the SCF uses statistical methods to
impute missing data; the technique makes multiple estimates of missing data to allow for an estimate of the uncertainty attributable to this type of nonresponse.60

60

See Arthur B. Kennickell (1998), “Multiple Imputation in the Survey of Consumer Finances,” working paper (Washington:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October), https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/files/
impute98.pdf.

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