1962 Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers and 1963 Survey of Changes in Family Finances

Summary Results

Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers
Dorothy S. Projector
Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol.51 (March 1964), pp. 285-293.
Article (1.2 MB PDF)

Summary Reports for the 1962 SFCC and the 1963 SCFF
Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers
Dorothy S. Projector and Gertrude S. Weiss, 1966
This book provides an overview of the 1962 survey and discusses in detail the size and composition of wealth in the United States in 1962.
Book (12.3 MB PDF)

Survey of Changes in Family Finances
Dorothy S. Projector, 1968
This book provides an overview of the 1963 survey and discusses in detail the size and composition of saving in the US in 1963 in relation to income, net worth, and other characteristics.
Book (23.5 MB PDF)

Current SCF Tables and Chartbook

Documentation

Two types of technical documentation for the 1962 SFCC and the 1963 SFCC are available here: a combined codebook for both surveys and the individual questionnaires for each survey.

Codebook for the 1962 Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers and the 1963 Survey of Changes in Family Finances
The codebook contains a description of the variables in each survey and related information about the design of both surveys.
Codebook (153 KB ASCII)
Last updated February 5, 1999

Questionnaires for the 1962 SFCC
Form FRB1: This quesitonnaire was designed primarily for upper income families and was intended to be administered by an interviewer.
Form FRB1a: This questionnaire is a self-administered form designed primarily to obtain balance sheet and income data from upper income families that completed form FRB1.
Form FRB2: This questionnaire was designed primarily for middle and low income families and was intended to be administered by an interviewer. 
Form FRB1 (786 KB PDF)
Form FRB1a (1.1 MB PDF)
Form FRB2 (2.4 MB PDF)

Questionnaires for the 1963 SCFF
Form FRB2a: This questionnaire was used by the interviewer to collect information on changes in assets and liabilities for all families.
Form FRB2b: This form was used by the inteviewer to record changes in the family unit. 
Form 2a (1.7 MB PDF)
Form 2b (88 KB PDF)

Survey Data

Three versions of the survey data are available here. One version is a data set merging the final public data of both survey years. These data are available in both SAS and Stata formats. The second version is the pair of ASCII flatfiles that were the final versions of the two data sets released to the public at the completion of the surveys. Finally, there is an ASCII flatfile that is the earliest known surviving version of the 1962 survey with unimputed missing data. Two types of compression are available: GZIP and PKZIP. (See PKWARE website for software to uncompress WINZIP files.)

Merged 1962/1963 SAS Data Set
Missing data were singly imputed and the codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set. The final survey data are available in two transportable types of files, both of which may be used with the current versions of SAS. (Help is available for importing these files as SAS datasets.) 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 dataset to another form using a software package that does not support CPORT files. Both of these types of files are provided in compressed form as GZIP files. (See H.15 for software to uncompress GZIP files.)

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting PROC CPORT transport file will require 2.1 MB of disk space and the resulting PROC COPY transport file will require 12.1 MB of disk space. When uncompressed and imported as a V6.12 engine SAS data set, these files require 13 MB of disk space.
  
Survey data: CPORT version (519 KB ZIP)
Survey data: COPY/EXPORT version (636 KB ZIP)
Last updated January 7, 2000

Merged 1962/1963 Stata Data Set
A second version of the merged 1962/1963 data set is provided in Stata format. 

WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting Stata file will require 4.3 MB of disk space. 

Survey data: Stata version (440 KB ZIP)
Last updated February 28, 2006

1962 Imputed ASCII Data Set
Missing data were singly imputed and the codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set. The data available are contained in a compressed ASCII file. When uncompressed the file requires 4.9 MB of disk space.

WARNING Some browser versions will download the GZIP file in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 4.9 MB of disk space. 

Survey data (243 KB ZIP)
Last updated October 21, 1997

1963 Imputed ASCII Data Set
Missing data were singly imputed and the codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set. The data available are contained in a compressed ASCII file. When uncompressed the file requires 7.5 MB of disk space.
 
WARNING: Some browser versions will download the ZIP file in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 7.5 MB of disk space. 
Survey data (273 KB ZIP)
Last updated October 21, 1997

1962 Unimputed ASCII Data Set
Missing data remain in the file and the codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set. The data available are contained in a compressed ASCII file. When uncompressed the file requires 4.9 MB of disk space.
 
WARNING: Some browser versions will download the ZIP file in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 4.9 MB of disk space.
  
Survey data (243 KB ZIP)
Last updated October 21, 1997

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Last Update: March 09, 2017