To track the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial security in the U.S., the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia conducted 12 national consumer surveys between April 2020 and April 2022. The surveys focused on changes in job status and personal financial security throughout the pandemic.
The survey collected responses from a cross-sectional sample of U.S. adults. It was conducted by Dynata, an online market research firm providing access to survey panels that are nationally representative of the United States. Respondents completed a survey designed by CFI that collected information on income, employment, and financial security both before and after the COVID-19 crisis began. Responses were managed throughout the survey process to ensure appropriate representation of certain demographic groups (e.g., those with higher and lower incomes, urban and rural residents, and self-employed individuals).
To account for variances in core demographic distributions between surveys, we reweighted the results of each survey wave to reflect the income, age, and gender distributions of the 2020 American Community Survey. After reweighting, each wave now reflects identical distributions of income, age, and gender. All data referenced in this repository reflect the reweighted results from each wave, unless specifically noted otherwise; therefore, values reported previously may be different than those referenced here.
