Using six Survey of Consumer Finances cross-sectional datasets representing the years 1983-2001, this study investigates changes in financial risk tolerance levels over time. Logit analyses are performed to test changes in risk tolerance, controlling for respondent and household characteristics....

About 20% of U.S. households are credit constrained. This research analyzes credit constraints among those who have applied for credit and controls for the effects of past credit behavior on being credit constrained. It is the first to identify the impact on being credit constrained of being...

Although there are over one million same-sex couple households in the United States, there has not been much research on their investment attitudes and behavior. This study uses datasets from the combined 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2001 Surveys of Consumer Finance to compare same-sex couples to other...

Most research studying family financial behavior of racial/ethnic groups has ignored Asian households or arbitrarily combined them with other racial/ethnic groups. We treated Asian households as a separate racial/ethnic group to compare twelve financial behaviors and attitudes of Asian...

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is the most frequently used dataset for research in this journal, but many researchers and readers do not fully understand some of the dataset's complex details. This article provides insight into important issues that researchers and readers need to...

Conventional advice is to reduce risky investments as one ages. Such a generalized focus on risk avoidance may be inappropriate for elderly with longer life spans and those with financial goals that extend beyond their lifetime. To better understand risky asset holdings among the elderly, we...

Which spouse is more knowledgeable about the household's finances in mixed‐sex married couple households? The answer to this question can be inferred from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which assigns the title of “respondent” to the person the household indicates is more...

Which spouse is more knowledgeable about the household’s finances in mixed-sex married couple households? The answer to this question can be inferred from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which assigns the title of “respondent” to the person the household indicates is more...

This study investigates financial risk aversion using an improved measure based on income gambles and rigorously related to optimal portfolio choices. The new measure modifies a previous measure by adding graphical presentations to clarify the impact of different income choices. We compared the...

White households are more likely to hold stock investments than minority households. Stock ownership rates of minorities generally increased between 1992 and 2001, but between 2001 and 2004 the rate decreased significantly for each minority group studied but did not significantly change for...