Section 529 plans are tax-qualified college saving or prepaid tuition programs generally offered and administered by the states. Created as tax-advantaged savings vehicles, they were designed to encourage families to save for future college education expenses

Real household mortgage debt has been flat over the past two years. However, as described in more detail below, new data on credit flows reveal that mortgage inflows have picked up for the first time since before the financial crisis, including to individuals with lower credit scores

Much of the attention to income inequality and poverty is focused on individual level circumstances. However, researchers have also observed that living in an area of concentrated poverty may result in additional disadvantages to individuals beyond that which results from their own individual...

Inflation in the United States has been running at low levels. Over the five years ending in December 2014, the percent change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), at 8.8 percent (or 1.7 percent at an annual rate), was the lowest rate of price increase seen in the United States in half a century

Over the past ten years, the real amount of student debt owed by American households more than doubled, from about $450 billion to more than $1.1 trillion. As a result of this increase, in 2010 student loan debt surpassed credit card debt as the largest class of non-housing consumer debt

A persistent media narrative from the Great Recession is the phenomenon of "boomerang" kids, that is, the rapid increase of young adults moving back in with their baby boomer parents. From a life-cycle perspective, boomerang kids may be delaying wealth-building, and they may be a strain on...