The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances for 2019 provides insights into the evolution of family income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted in 2016. The survey shows that over the 2016–19 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes rose 5 percent, and mean income decreased 3 percent. Real median net worth increased 18 percent, and mean net worth rose 2 percent. This survey marks the first in the aftermath of the Great Recession in which between-survey changes in the median outpaced changes in the mean for either measure, indicating that families in large parts of both distributions enjoyed gains in economic well-being. And, while the data also reveal some disparities in the evolution of income and net worth since 2016 across families differentiated by economic characteristics, such as income or wealth, and demographic characteristics, such as age, education, or race and ethnicity, many groups with historically lower income and net worth saw relatively large gains. This article reviews these and other changes in the financial condition of U.S. families, including developments in assets, liabilities, debt payments, and credit market experiences. The findings in this article do not reflect the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on family finances, as almost all of the data in the 2019 survey were collected before the onset of the pandemic.

the option of a defined contribution plan rather than the NYSTRS defined benefit plan. For these employees, employers will contribute 8% of salary to the State University of New York Optional Retirement Plan. Employees will contribute at the same sliding scale rates as those in the defined benefit plan. South Carolina. Act 278, Laws of 2012 (House Bill 4967), makes various changes affecting South Carolina Retirement System benefits for new general members and members of the Police Officers' Retirement System.  Vesting. For new general and Police Officer members as of July 1, 2012, the vesting requirement will increase from five years to eight years for eligibility for service retirement benefits, disability benefits based upon non-work-related injuries, in-service death benefits, the ability to purchase non-qualified service credit (i.e., "air time").  Final Average Compensation. For new general and Police Officer members as of that date, final average compensation will be based on the member's five highest years of earned compensation instead of the three highest years.

This paper uses detailed high-frequency regulatory data to evaluate whether trading increases or decreases systemic risk in the U.S. banking sector. We estimate the sensitivity of weekly bank trading net profits to a variety of aggregate risk factors, which include equities, fixed-income, derivatives, foreign exchange, and commodities. We find that U.S. banks had large trading exposures to equity market risk before the introduction of the Volcker Rule in 2014 and that they curtailed these exposures afterwards. Pre-rule equity risk exposures were large across the board of the main asset classes, including fixed-income. There is also evidence of smaller exposures to credit and currency risk. We corroborate the main finding on equity risk with a quasi-natural experiment that exploits the phased-in introduction of reporting requirements to refine identification, and an optimal changepoint regression that estimates time-varying exposures to address rebalancing. A stress-test calibration indicates that the Volcker Rule was an effective financial-stability regulation, as even a 5% drop in stock market returns would have led to material aggregate trading losses for banks in the pre-Volcker period, as large as about 3% (1.5%) of sector-wide market risk weighted assets (tier 1 capital).