Figure 2. Mean Net Worth across Pandemic Experiences, by Usual Income Group
2022 dollars



Note: The key in each panel identifies series in order from left to right. All families are included in the "all" category, but for illustrative purposes, the figures do not separately present the top decile. COVID-19 question categories are defined for the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) respondent (and their spouse or partner, if applicable). Employment experience classifications use the first response to the employment status question from each person. "No change" in employment refers to either no change or the small percentage of families (less than 2 percent of families in each grouping we consider) that reported both a reduction and increase across spouses or partners. Hospitalization and persistent symptoms are not mutually exclusive categories. Telework leverages the full menu of possible responses to employment status (as opposed to just the first response).
III. Concluding Remarks
This analysis presents a first look at findings on families' employment, health, and finances from the 2022 SCF COVID-19 questions. While no major income or education group was fully spared—a reflection of the widespread havoc that the pandemic unleashed on the U.S. economy—each dimension analyzed reveals a clear distributional pattern, indicating that lower-income and less-educated families bore the brunt of the corresponding disruptions. Nonetheless, the evidence is, on balance, mostly reassuring with respect to key measures of families' economic well-being from the core SCF, even for those that disproportionately experienced pandemic-related setbacks. That said, while, as of 2022, such families generally appeared to have had a fair amount of financial cushion to weather future setbacks, they had notably less than other families, particularly at the bottom of the income distribution, warranting further study. There are also many other unexplored avenues for future research within the SCF, including compositional questions concerning differential experiences by age, race, and ethnicity, as well as an analysis of the other COVID-19 questions that were not considered in this note (for example, areas of hardship, child-related responsibilities).24
Work Cited
Aladangady, Aditya, Jesse Bricker, Andrew C. Chang, Sarena Goodman, Jacob Krimmel, Kevin B. Moore, Sarah Reber, Alice Henriques Volz, and Richard A. Windle (2023). "Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October, https://doi.org/10.17016/8799
Aladangady, Aditya, Andrew C. Chang, and Jacob Krimmel (2023). "Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty: Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances," FEDS Notes. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October 18.
Barrero, Jose Maria, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis (2021). "Why Working from Home Will Stick," NBER Working Paper Series 28731. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, April, https://www.nber.org/papers/w28731.
Ganong, Peter, Pascal Noel, and Joseph Vavra (2020). "US Unemployment Insurance Replacement Rates During the Pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 191.
Goda, Gopi S., and Evan J. Soltas (2023). "The Impacts of Covid-19 Absences on Workers," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 222.
Helppie-McFall, Brooke, and Joanne W. Hsu (2021). "Financial Profiles of Workers Most Vulnerable to Coronavirus-related Earnings Loss in the Spring of 2020," Financial Planning Review, Volume 3, Issue 4.
Appendix: COVID-19 Questions added to the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances
Survey respondents were asked the following questions after those gathering information on members of the family and before those on expectations for the economy:
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected American households. We would like to ask you the following questions about the experiences you (and your family living here) had after the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.
X19000/X19001/X19002/X19003/X19004/X19005/X19006/X19007/X19008/X19009