Using six Survey of Consumer Finances cross-sectional datasets representing the years 1983-2001, this study investigates changes in financial risk tolerance levels over time. Logit analyses are performed to test changes in risk tolerance, controlling for respondent and household characteristics....

We identify and present original analyses of four methodological issues related to using Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) datasets and illustrate these issues with recent articles published in this journal. The issues are: recognizing that the respondent is not necessarily the household head,...

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is the most frequently used dataset for research in this journal, but many researchers and readers do not fully understand some of the dataset's complex details. This article provides insight into important issues that researchers and readers need to...

In the 1995-2004 period, 48% of U.S. households owned stock assets, 11% owned private business assets, and 18% owned investment real estate other than a primary residence. These risky, high return investment assets accounted for 45% of household assets in the aggregate, even though 44% of...

Most research studying family financial behavior of racial/ethnic groups has ignored Asian households or arbitrarily combined them with other racial/ethnic groups. We treated Asian households as a separate racial/ethnic group to compare twelve financial behaviors and attitudes of Asian...

While all segments of society have been impacted by the economic downturn of the past decade, some groups have suffered more than others. This research finds that Hispanic households were about twice as likely in 2010 to be seriously delinquent on debt payments as in 2004. During the same time...

About 20% of U.S. households are credit constrained. This research analyzes credit constraints among those who have applied for credit and controls for the effects of past credit behavior on being credit constrained. It is the first to identify the impact on being credit constrained of being...