The Consumer Credit Explorer utilizes data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax Data (henceforth, CCP), an anonymized, nationally representative 1-in-20 sample of all individuals in the United States with a Social Security number and credit file. The CCP is a longitudinal panel that provides a quarterly snapshot of consumer credit use. Estimates included in this tool were produced by staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, with support from staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Inclusion in the CCP sample is limited to individuals who Equifax knows to have at least one of the following: a public record (e.g., a judgment) within the past seven years, a bankruptcy filing within the past 10 years, an open credit account, or a closed account that is still being reported to Equifax by the lender.

For more information on the CCP data set, see Donghoon Lee and Wilbert van der Klaauw, “An Introduction to the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel,” Staff Report 479, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2010.

To generate estimates based on neighborhood characteristics (e.g., low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, majority Hispanic or Latino neighborhoods, etc.), census tract-level identifiers from the CCP are merged with demographic and socioeconomic data from the FFIEC’s 2022 Census Flat File, which primarily draws from the 2016–2020 American Community Survey. For additional information, see the associated FFIEC documentation.

When using estimates or figures from this tool, we request that you include the following citation:

Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax Data and Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Census Flat File, accessed via the Consumer Credit Explorer on [date].

Because of data vendor restrictions, we are not able to provide any series from the tool in spreadsheet format.