FR3059_20150428_omb

Supporting Statement for the
2016 Survey of Consumer Finances
(SCF; FR 3059; OMB No. 7100-0287)
Summary
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, under delegated authority from
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), proposes to pretest and execute the 2016 Survey
of Consumer Finances (SCF; FR 3059; OMB No. 7100-0287). This would be the twelfth
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.
Authority is being requested to conduct (1) up to 150 interviews averaging about 75
minutes (main pretest) to be obtained in a test or series of tests of the survey procedures in 2015,
and (2) up to 7,000 interviews averaging about 75 minutes (main survey) between April 2016
and March 2017. The surveys would be conducted by an outside contractor.1 Funding for the
pretest is included in the Federal Reserve’s budget for 2015. Funding for the main survey will be
requested in the 2016 budget.
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 questionnaire would follow the form of the 2013 version with minor revisions. For
convenience of review, a copy of the 2013 survey codebook is available at
www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/files/codebk2013.txt. 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 estimated burden for this information collection is
8,938 hours.
Background and Justification
For many years, the Federal Reserve has sponsored consumer surveys to obtain
information on the financial behavior of households. The 2016 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 Federal Reserve. For example, these surveys
have been used in Board briefings and numerous memoranda to examine the distribution and
changes in the distribution of debt burdens in the population, coverage of household deposits by
1

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago was the contractor for 2013 survey.

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.
Description of Information Collection
The core information collected by the 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. 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.

2

Time Schedule for Information Collection and Publication
The field-work for the pretest would be conducted during 2015. The field-work for the
main survey would be conducted between April 2016 and March 2017. Very preliminary results
from the main survey would be available to the Federal Reserve in mid-2017. It is expected that
the data would be published in summary form in the Federal Reserve Bulletin in 2017. 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 Federal Reserve’s public
website. None of the pretest data would be released to the public.
Legal Status
The Board’s Legal Division has determined that the statutory basis for collecting this
information is section 2A, and 12A of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. § 225a and 263).
Respondent participation in the survey is voluntary. The names and other characteristics that
would directly identify respondents will be retained by the Federal Reserve’s contractor and not
made available to the Federal Reserve. Accordingly, the Federal Reserve believes that such data
are not records subject to the Freedom of Information Act. If these data are deemed records,
however, the Board’s Legal Division believes that the records are exempt from disclosure
pursuant to the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act and section
(b)(3) of the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3)).
Consultation Outside the Agency
The final survey questionnaire would be developed jointly by the Federal Reserve and the
contractor. The contractor would conduct the interviews for this survey.
The data to support the part of the survey sample selected by the Federal Reserve 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 Federal Reserve 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 October 29, 2014, the Federal Reserve published a notice in the Federal Register
(79 FR 64388) requesting public comment for 60 days on the proposal to pretest and execute the
2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. The comment period for this notice expired on December
29, 2014. The Federal Reserve did not receive any comments. On February 2, 2015, the Federal
Reserve published a final notice in the Federal Register (80 FR 5531).
Estimate of Respondent Burden
The Federal Reserve estimates the pretest and main survey would require an average of
75 minutes per household. With 150 respondents, the estimated pretest burden would be 188
hours and would be incurred on a one-time basis in 2015. With 7,000 respondents, the estimated

3

main survey burden would be 8,750 hours and would be incurred on a one-time basis in 2016
and 2017. These reporting requirements represent less than 1 percent of the total Federal
Reserve System annual paperwork burden.

FR 3059
Pre-test
Main survey

Number of
respondents

Annual
frequency

150
7,000

1
1

Total

Estimated
average time
per response
75 minutes
75 minutes

Estimated
annual burden
hours
188
8,750
8,938

The estimated cost to the public for the information collection would be $214,512.2
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 Federal Reserve estimates
that the contract price for the survey would be $14.8 million.

2

The average consumer cost of $24 is estimated using data from the BLS Economic News Release (USDL-140433), www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.nr0.htm.

4