Feb 3 -- The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) invites comment by April 5, 2021 on its proposal to conduct the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). The proposed survey instrument unchanged from the 2019 SCF.
This triennial survey is the only source of representative information on the structure of U.S. families' finances. The survey would collect data on the assets, debts, income, work history, pension rights, use of financial services, and attitudes of a sample of U.S. families. Because the ownership of some assets is relatively concentrated in a small number of families, the survey would make a special effort to ensure proper representation of such assets by systematically oversampling wealthier families.
For the 2022 SCF, the Board will conduct: (1) up to 150 interviews averaging about 100 minutes (pretest) to be obtained in a test or series of tests of the survey procedures in 2021 and (2) up to 7,000 interviews averaging about 100 minutes (main survey) between April 2022 and March 2023. The surveys would be conducted by an outside contractor, to be selected in February 2021.
The 2022 SCF is expected to provide a core set of data on family income, assets, and liabilities. For the survey, the contractor and the Board would draw samples for the survey designed to obtain at most 7,000 completed interviews. The sample selected by the contractor would be an area-probability design which is a type of geographically structured random sample that provides good national coverage of widely-distributed behavior. The sample selected by the Board would be drawn from statistical records derived from individual tax returns; this “list” sample would be designed to oversample wealthy households. Both samples would be selected in a way that is consistent with procedures used in earlier SCFs. When the two samples are combined and sample weights applied, the survey is representative of the number of households in the United States in the survey year. The 2019 SCF represented 128.6 million households.
The fieldwork for the pretest would be conducted during 2021. The fieldwork for the main survey would be conducted between April 2022 and March 2023. Very preliminary results from the main survey would be available to the Board in mid-2023. Data would be published in summary form in the Federal Reserve Bulletin in 2023. A version of the microdata, which would be altered to protect the identity of individual respondents, would be made available to the public through the Board’s public website.
Survey of Consumer Finances website, including technical documentation:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
Draft 2022 SCF supporting statement:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/reportforms/formsreview/FR3059%20OMB%20SS.pdf
FR notice inviting comment:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/02/03/2021-02200/proposed-agency-information-collection-activities-comment-request
Point of contact: Nuha Elmaghrabi, Office of the Chief Data Officer, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (202) 452-3829 Nuha.Elmaghrabi@frb.gov
