The Federal Reserve Board's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) collects information about family incomes, net worth, balance sheet components, credit use, and other financial outcomes. 1 The 2016 SCF reveals broad-based gains in income and net worth since the previous time the survey was conducted, in 2013. 2 During the three years between the beginning of the 2013 and 2016 surveys, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.2 percent, the civilian unemployment rate fell from 7.5 percent to 5 percent, and the annual rate of change in the consumer price index averaged 0.8 percent. 3 These changes in aggregate economic performance led to broadbased income gains across many different types of families. Several observations from the SCF about family incomes stand out: 4 ‰ Between 2013 and 2016, median family income grew 10 percent, and mean family income grew 14 percent (figure 1). ‰ Families throughout the income distribution experienced gains in average real incomes between 2013 and 2016, reversing the trend from 2010 to 2013, when real incomes fell or remained stagnant for all but the top of the income distribution. ‰ Families at the top of the income distribution saw larger gains in income between 2013 and 2016 than other families, consistent with widening income inequality. ‰ Families without a high school diploma and nonwhite and Hispanic families experienced larger proportional gains in incomes than other families between 2013 and 2016, although more-educated families and white non-Hispanic families continue to have higher incomes than other families. The improvements in economic activity along with rising house and corporate equity prices combined to support increases in average and median family net worth (wealth) between 2013 and 2016 after both measures remained stagnant between 2010 and 2013. The national CoreLogic Home Price Index increased at an annual rate of 6.5 percent between 1 See box 1, "The Data Used in This Article," for a general description of the SCF data. The appendix to this article provides a summary of key technical aspects of the survey. 2 For a detailed discussion of the 2013 survey as well as references to earlier surveys, see

Most available estimates of U.S. wealth and income concentration indicate that the top shares are high and have been rising in recent decades, but there is some disagreement about specific levels and trends. Household surveys are the traditional data source used to measure the top shares, but recent studies using administrative tax records suggest that these survey-based top share estimates may not be capturing all of the increasing concentration. In this paper, we reconcile the divergent top share estimates, showing how the choices of data sets and methodological decisions affect levels and trends. Relative to the new and most widely cited top share estimates based on administrative tax data alone, our preferred estimates for both wealth and income concentration are lower and have been rising less rapidly in recent years. 1. This paper was written while Jacob Krimmel was a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board. 2. Notable exceptions include, for the top income shares, Congressional Budget Office (2014); Burkhauser, Larrimore, and Simon (2012); Burkhauser and others (2012); and Smeeding and Thompson (2011). For the top wealth shares, notable exceptions include Kopczuk (2015b). 3. Bricker and others (2014) describe the results from the latest SCF, conducted in 2013. A slow rise in the top wealth shares is also consistent with estimates derived from administrative estate tax data (Kopczuk and Saez 2004). 4. Piketty and Saez regularly update the tables and statistics from their 2003 paper. The most recent version, updated to 2014, is available at http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/ TabFig2014prel.xls. We refer to these updated data throughout this paper. 5. SCF income values are for the year preceding the survey. 6. These issues are not unique to the United States. See, for example, Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (2011), who provide a multinational and longer-run view of rising income inequality.

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.