Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released a report titled “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2007 to 2010: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances.” (pdf) This report is issued every three years.
The report is 80 pages long. However, some of the summary statistics have been widely reported, such as in today’s Wall Street Journal article titled “Families’ Net Worth Drops to ’90s Level” and the New York Times article of yesterday titled “Family Net Worth Drops to Level of Early 90’s, Fed Says.”
A couple of notable excerpts from the New York Times article:
A hypothetical family richer than half the nation’s families and poorer than the other half had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, compared with $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss.
also:
Families’ income also continued to decline, a trend that predated the crisis but accelerated over the same period. Median family income fell to $45,800 in 2010 from $49,600 in 2007. All figures were adjusted for inflation.
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The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 1319.04 as this post is written