Survey Data

Two general types of data set are provided:

Full Public Data: Full data sets of all SCF variables

Summary Extract Public Data: Extract data set of summary variables used in the Federal Reserve Bulletin article – all dollar variables inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars

All of the versions of the full and summary extract public data sets are provided in compressed form as WINZIP files. (See PKWARE website for software to uncompress WINZIP files.)

SPECIAL NOTE FOR R USERS: An outside programmer has created scripts for converting and working with SCF data. These scripts are available for download from https://github.com/ajdamico/usgsd/tree/master/Survey%20of%20Consumer%20Finances.

Missing data in the survey have been imputed five times using a multiple imputation technique. The information is stored in five separate imputation replicates (implicates). Thus, for the 6,492 families interviewed for the survey, there are 32,460 records in the data set. Ten observations were deleted for the public version of the data set for purposes of disclosure avoidance; thus, there are 32,410 records in the public data set for 6,482 families. The codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set and the steps taken for disclosure avoidance.

<p>This page uses Javascript. Your browser either doesn't support Javascript or you have it turned off.</p>< p>To see this page as it is meant to appear please use a Javascript enabled browser.</p> Full Public Data set: SAS Format

The full final survey data are available to the public in two SAS transport formats that may be used with the current version of SAS. (Help is available for importing these files as SAS data sets.) One version is created using PROC CPORT; this is the smaller of the two files. The second one is created using PROC COPY with the EXPORT option; this file may be particularly convenient for users who do not have access to SAS, but who do have some means of translating the data set to another form using a software package that does not support CPORT files.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting PROC CPORT transport file will require 310 MB of disk space and the resulting PROC COPY transport file will require 769 MB of disk space. When uncompressed and imported as a V9.1.3 engine SAS data set, these files require 760 MB of disk space.



Main survey data: CPORT version ( 11.1 MB ZIP)

Main survey data: COPY/EXPORT version ( 17.3 MB ZIP)

Last updated 9/4/2014



Full Public Data set: Stata Format

A second version of the full public data set is given as a Stata data file. Because the data set contains approximately 5300 variables, users will need to use Stata SE if they wish to import all the variables. Users of standard Stata will need to specify a subset of variables when using the data set.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting Stata file will require 326 MB of disk space.



Main survey data: Stata version ( 10.4 MB ZIP)

Last updated 9/4/2014



Full Public Data set: ASCII format

A third version of the full public data set is given in ASCII format. The variables included have exactly the same values as those in the SAS and Stata data set. The layout of the variables is given by a format file, which is provided in Excel and tab-delimited formats. Note that under certain operating systems the end of record marker will add one character to the record length listed in the format file.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 1,734 MB of disk space.



Main survey data: ASCII ( 43.1 MB ZIP)

Map of variables: Excel ( 772 KB Excel)

Map of variables: Tab-delimited ( 218 KB ASCII)

Last updated 9/4/2014



Summary Extract Data set: SDA On-line analysis tool

The SDA on-line analysis tool is a program provided by a third party for the on-line analysis of summary variables such as the statistics found in the Federal Reserve Bulletin article. SDA is developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. The Help/FAQ file linked to at the top of the SDA page provides instructions on how to perform analysis of the data.



Summary Extract Data set: SAS format

The summary extract data set contains variables used in the Federal Reserve Bulletin article. All dollar variables have been inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars. Definitions of the variables in the summary extract dataset can be found in the SAS program used to create the data set. The SAS version is created using PROC CPORT, a version using PROC COPY and the EXPORT option is not provided due to the limitation on the length of variable names when using the EXPORT option.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting PROC CPORT transport file will require 16.4 MB of disk space.



SAS extract data ( 4.4 MB ZIP)

Last updated 9/28/2020



Summary Extract Data set: Stata format

A second version of the extract data set is given as a Stata data file.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting Stata file will require 32 MB of disk space.



Stata extract data ( 4.5 MB ZIP)

Last updated 9/28/2020



Summary Extract Data set: CSV format

A third version of the extract data set is given as a CSV file. Due to column limitiations in versions of Excel prior to 2007, the full file can only be viewed in Excel 2007 and later versions.

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting file will require about 40 MB of disk space.



CSV extract data (4 MB ZIP)

Last updated 9/28/2020

