The Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States

This paper describes the construction of the Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA), a dataset containing quarterly estimates of the distribution of U.S. household wealth since 1989. The DFA builds on two existing Federal Reserve Board statistical products—quarterly aggregate measures of household wealth from the Financial Accounts of the United States, and triennial wealth distribution measures from the Survey of Consumer Finances—to incorporate distributional information into a national accounting framework. The DFA complements other sources by generating distributional statistics that are consistent with macro aggregates by providing quarterly data on a timely basis, and by constructing wealth distributions across demographic characteristics. We encourage policymakers, researchers, and other interested parties to use the DFA to better understand issues related to the distribution of U.S. household wealth.

SERIES: STUDIES IN INCOME AND WEALTH