FR3059_20180829_omb

Supporting Statement for the
Survey of Consumer Finances
(FR 3059; OMB No. 7100-0287)
Summary
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), under delegated
authority from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), proposes to extend for three years,
without revision, the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) (FR 3059; OMB No. 7100-0287).
This would be the thirteenth triennial SCF since 1983, the beginning of the current series. This
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.
The Board proposes to conduct (1) up to 150 interviews averaging about 90 minutes
(main pretest) to be obtained in a test or series of tests of the survey procedures in 2018 and (2)
up to 7,000 interviews averaging about 90 minutes (main survey) between April 2019 and March
2020. The surveys would be conducted by an outside contractor.1
The pretest and the main survey would be collected using a computer program; thus,
there is no hardcopy version of the questionnaire other than the text of the computer program.
The wording of the survey questions would be modified to reflect the outcome of the pretest, but
it is anticipated that such changes would be relatively small. The total annual burden for the
FR 3059 information collection is estimated to be 10,725 hours.
Background and Justification
For many years, the Board has sponsored consumer surveys to obtain information on the
financial behavior of households. The 2019 SCF would be the latest in a triennial series, which
began in 1983, that provides comprehensive data for U.S. families on the distribution of assets
and debts, along with related information and other data items necessary for analyzing financial
behavior. The SCF is the only survey conducted in the United States that provides such financial
data for a representative sample of all households.
In addition to providing baseline information for current analysis, data from earlier SCFs
have proved directly useful in policy work at the Board. For example, these surveys have been
used in Board briefings and numerous memoranda to examine wealth and income inequality,
changes in the distribution of debt burdens in the population, coverage of household deposits by
federal deposit insurance, ownership of mutual funds and stocks, automobile leasing, and many
other areas. The surveys have also been used extensively for longer-term research within the
Federal Reserve System, in the Office of Tax Analysis and other parts of the Treasury, in other
government agencies, in academia, in other research institutions, and in businesses.
1

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago was the contractor for 2016 survey.

Description of Information Collection
The core information collected by the pre-test and the main survey is summarized below.


Financial assets. These include checking, savings, and money market accounts; holdings of
publicly traded stock, bonds, certificates of deposit, mutual funds, annuities, trusts, and life
insurance.



Real estate and business assets. These include the value and purchase terms of the
household’s principal residence and other properties, and detailed information on privately
held businesses.



Pension assets. These include IRA, Keogh, thrift, profit sharing, 401(k), and other taxdeferred account holdings. Information would also be collected on current or expected
benefits from each pension and from Social Security. Questions on the expected date of
retirement, spousal benefits, and amount in defined contribution accounts would enable the
calculation of the present value of pension benefits. Sufficient information on each
household member’s work history and future work plans would be collected such that the
present value of Social Security benefits also could be calculated.



Other assets. Information would be collected on other assets such as oil leases, mineral
rights, and royalties. Some data would also be gathered on jewelry, art objects, other
valuables, and major consumer durables such as automobiles and boats.



Household debts. The purpose, amount outstanding, source, and terms of each household
debt would be collected. These debts include home mortgages and home equity loans, lines
of credit, credit cards, other consumer loans, and other loans from businesses and individuals.
Information would also be collected on major household expenditures related to debt
acquisition including those for automobiles and home improvements.



Demographic data. These include education, employment and marital history, age, health,
race, and earnings for each household member.



Household income. A detailed breakdown of income designed to align with tax data would
also be collected.



Attitudes and financial decision making. Attitudes toward saving and credit would be
collected. Information on the use of financial services and methods of choosing among
competing sources would also be sought. Institutional data would be sought for each account
or financial service used by the household. These data would be collected in a way that
would allow identification of any clustering of services at institutions. For each institution
information would be obtained on the type, proximity, and typical mode of use.

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Time Schedule for Information Collection and Publication
The field-work for the pretest would be conducted during 2018. The field-work for the
main survey would be conducted between April 2019 and March 2020. Very preliminary results
from the main survey would be available to the Board in mid-2020. It is expected that the data
would be published in summary form in the Federal Reserve Bulletin in 2020. 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. None of the pretest data would
be released to the public.
Legal Status
Section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act (FRA) requires that the Board and the Federal
Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit
aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to
promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term
interest rates (12 U.S.C. 225a). In addition, under section 12A of the FRA, the FOMC is
required to implement regulations relating to the open market operations conducted by Federal
Reserve Banks. Those transactions must be governed with a view to accommodating commerce
and business and with regard to their bearing upon the general credit situation of the country (12
U.S.C. 263). The Board and the FOMC use the information obtained from the FR 3059 to help
fulfill these obligations. The FR 3059 is a voluntary survey.
The information collected on the FR 3059 is exempt from disclosure in identifiable form
under exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act, which protects information that the
disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of individuals
involved (5 U.S.C. 552(b)(6)).
Consultation Outside the Agency
The final survey questionnaire would be developed jointly by the Board and the
contractor. The contractor would conduct the computer based interviews for this survey.
The data to support the part of the survey sample selected by the Board would be
provided by the Statistics of Income Division (SOI) of the Internal Revenue Service under a
contract that allows this use of the data as well as other more limited uses of the data for
statistical adjustments to the final data and related purposes. As in past SCFs, the sample
selection and survey administration would be managed so that the Board would not be given any
names of survey participants; SOI would not be given data to link survey responses with tax
records; and the contractor would not be given income data derived from the tax returns.
On March 15, 2018, the Board published an initial notice in the Federal Register
(83 FR 11520) requesting public comment for 60 days on the extension, without revision, of the
FR 3059. The comment period for this notice expired on May 14, 2018. The Board did not
receive any comments. On June 6, 2018, the Board published a final notice in the Federal
Register (83 FR 26286).

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Estimate of Respondent Burden
As shown in the table below, the Board estimates the pretest and main survey would
require an average of 90 minutes per household. With 150 respondents, the estimated pretest
burden would be 225 hours and would be incurred on a one-time basis in 2018. With 7,000
respondents, the estimated main survey burden would be 10,500 hours and would be incurred on
a one-time basis in 2019 and 2020. These reporting requirements represent less than 1 percent of
the total Federal Reserve System annual paperwork burden.
Number of
Annual
respondents frequency

FR 3059
Pre-test
Main survey

150
7,000

1
1

Total

Estimated
average time
per response
90 minutes
90 minutes

Estimated
annual burden
hours
225
10,500
10,725

The estimated cost to the public for the information collection is estimated to be $278,850.2
Sensitive Questions
Respondents would be asked to identify the age and sex of individual family members;
information on race would be collected using guidelines from the OMB. This information is
needed in the proposed survey in order to analyze the demographic aspects of consumer
finances.
Estimate of Cost to the Federal Reserve System
Work on the survey would be performed under a contract. The Board estimates that the
contract price for the survey would be $16.1 million.

2

The average consumer cost of $26 is estimated using data from the BLS Economic News Release (USDL-160462) www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.nr0.htm.

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