The Labor, Income, Finances, and Expectations (LIFE) Survey was initiated in 2023 and launched publicly in 2024 by the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The LIFE Survey is used to collect data on topics related to CFI’s mission to better understand how people earn, spend, save, and invest, as well as how credit markets and payment systems affect the economy.
The quarterly survey collects data from a cross-sectional sample of U.S. adults (ages 18+) through an online questionnaire designed by CFI and hosted by a third-party vendor. The questionnaire is designed to allow the analysis of key consumer trends while providing our researchers with the flexibility to investigate timely topics that are relevant to CFI’s core mission. Demographic information (e.g., age, income, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, and household size/composition) is collected each quarter, and the composition is monitored and weighted to ensure national representativeness and consistency of sample characteristics across the survey series.
A summary of the survey results will be published here on a quarterly basis with additional analyses drawn from survey data published as they are developed. Data reports and downloads, all of which will be available on the main LIFE Survey page going forward, reflect weighted results unless otherwise noted.
