New Panel Data!

The Fed has just released their data from the 2007-2009 panel Survey of Consumer Finances.  The SCF, conducted every three years, includes hundreds of variables on the assets, liabilities, income, and financial product shopping and utilization of American consumers.  Some questions include "what was the most important factor in your decision to refinance your mortgage?" and "during the past year, have you taken out a payday loan?".  The 2007-2009 panel data set is especially valuable because it offers a picture of household finances before and after the Global Financial Crisis; the 2007 survey respondents were resurveyed in 2009.  There is also a separate 2010 SCF survey, but those data have not been released yet. 

Possible research subjects one might explore with this data set include the relative wealth loss of different racial and ethnic groups, what type of consumers chose different types of mortgage loans and other credit products, and how financial product choice interacted with changes in consumer finances as the crisis unfolded.

The Fed staff's own summary of the data is here.  The paper describes wealth losses by wealth category and geographic region, but not by race or ethnicity.

Comments

[Nathalie Martin]

Alan, does this cover payday loan usage rates too? nathalie

[Alan White]

Nathalie, the full codebook for the survey is here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/files/codebk2009p.txt

There is only one question on payday as far as I can tell (did you get a payday loan in the past year.) The question was asked in both 2007 and 2009, for whatever that's worth.