FR3059_20210827_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 authority
delegated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has extended for three years,
without revision, the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) (FR 3059; OMB No. 7100-0287).
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 2019 and
(2) up to 7,000 interviews averaging about 100 minutes (main survey) between April 2022 and
March 2023. The pretest interviews and surveys would be conducted by an outside contractor.1
The pretest and the main survey would be collected by a field interviewer, either in
person or on the phone, using a computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) instrument. 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 estimated total annual burden for the FR 3059 is 11,917 hours.
Background and Justification
For many years, the Board has sponsored consumer surveys to obtain information on the
financial behavior of households. The 2022 SCF would be the fourteenth triennial survey, 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
1

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago was the contractor for 2019 survey.
For the 2022 SCF, the contractor will be selected in February 2021.

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 FR 3059 survey 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 SCFs are conducted by a field interviewer, provided by the contractor, either in
person or on the phone, using a computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) instrument. For the
2019 SCF, a small set of interviews (about 200) were partially completed via a web instrument,
and partially completed via in-person on phone interview. The web interviews were a test of the
feasibility of conducting the interview via the web.
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,
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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 ethnicity, 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.
Respondent Panel
The FR 3059 panel comprises a sample of U.S. families.

Time Schedule for Information Collection
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.
Public Availability of Data
It is expected that the 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. 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 Fed eral
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

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(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.
It is expected that the data collected would be published in summary form in the Federal
Reserve Bulletin. 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 p ublic
website. None of the pretest data would be released to the public. The information collected on
the FR 3059 that identifies the individual respondents may be exempt from disclosure under
exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act, which protects information the disclosure of
which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy (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 surveys, 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.
Public Comments
On February 3, 2021, the Board published an initial notice in the Federal Register (86 FR
8016) requesting public comment for 60 days on the extension, without revision, of the FR 3059.
The comment period for this notice expired on April 5, 2021. The Board did not receive any
comments. The Board adopted the extension, without revision, of the FR 3059 as originally
proposed. On May 5, 2021, the Board published a final notice in the Federal Register (86 FR
23969).
Estimate of Respondent Burden
As shown in the table below, the estimated annual burden for the FR 3059 is 11,917
hours. The Board estimates the pretest and main survey would require an average of 100 minutes
per household. With 150 respondents, the estimated pretest burden would be 2 50 hours and
would be incurred on a one-time basis in 2021. With 7,000 respondents, the estimated main
survey burden would be 11,667 hours and would be incurred on a one-time basis in 2022 and
2023. These reporting requirements represent less than 1 percent of the Board’s total paperwork
burden.

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Estimated
Estimated
Annual
number of
average time
frequency
respondents
per response
150
1
100 minutes
7,000
1
100 minutes

FR 3059
Pre-test
Main survey
Total

Estimated
annual burden
hours
250
11,667
11,917

The estimated total annual cost to the public for the FR 3059 is $321,759.2
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. The information collected from the FR 3059 survey is maintained in the Board’s
System of Records, BGFRS-20 Survey of Consumer Finances.3 A Privacy Act Statement will be
read by the field interviewer to individual respondents prior to conducting the survey.
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 collecting and processing this the FR 3059 survey would be $19.8 million.

2

The average consumer cost of $27 is estimated using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Occupational
Employment and Wages, May 2020, published March 31, 2021, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.t01.htm.
3
73 FR 24984 (May 6, 2008).

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