The Survey of Consumer Finances at Forty: Reflections from an Early User

Since it debuted in the 1980s, the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has been vital to research on household behavior for two main reasons. First, its oversampling of high-income households makes it the only nationally representative survey that can meaningfully capture the skewness in the distribution of wealth. Second, the SCF pioneered the linking of detailed administrative data to national household surveys with the Pension Provider Survey. As a consequence, it influenced the design of subsequent surveys. In more recent years, however, other data sources have risen in prominence relative to the SCF in economic analyses of household behavior. I argue that the lack of an ongoing panel dimension, the absence of continued links to administrative data, and changes in the style of research conducted over the last 30 years are largely to blame. Further, without additional investments, these trends are likely to continue to limit the role that the SCF can play in the scholarly and policy-relevant literature