1983 Survey of Consumer Finances

Summary Results

Survey of Consumer Finances, 1983
Robert B. Avery, Glenn B. Canner, Gregory E. Elliehausen, and Thomas A. Gustafson
Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 70 (September 1984), pp. 679-92.
Article (1.4 MB PDF)

Survey of Consumer Finances, 1983: A Second Report
Robert B. Avery, Glenn B. Canner, Gregory E. Elliehausen, and Thomas A. Gustafson
Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 70 (December 1984), pp. 857-68.
Article (1.2 MB PDF)

Financial Characteristics of High Income Families
Robert B. Avery and Gregory E. Elliehausen
Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 72 (March 1986), pp. 163-77.
Article (1.5 MB PDF)

Current SCF Tables and Chartbook

Documentation

Five types of technical documentation for the 1983 SCF are available: a codebook for the edited and imputed version of the 1983 data, a codebook for the original unprocessed data, the questionnaire cover sheet, the survey questionnaire, and technical working papers on the survey methodology.

Codebook for the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances (Edited and Imputed Data)
Robert B. Avery and Gregory E. Elliehausen
This codebook contains the text, variable names, and responses for the questions asked in the survey. Also provided are a brief summary of technical aspects of the survey design and an appendix of Census occupation and industry classification codes.
Appendix: Contains a map of the SCF sample areas and 1970 and 1980 Census Occupation and Industry codes. 
Codebook (476 KB ASCII)
Appendix (2.9 MB PDF)
Last updated July 18, 2006

Codebook for the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances (Original Unprocessed Data)
Survey Research Center, University of Michigan
This codebook lists the original survey variables and their definitions. 
Codebook (13.3 MB PDF)
Last updated July 11, 1984

Cover Sheet for the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances Questionnaire
The 1983 cover sheet contains forms for the following information:
the record of calls made on the household, the name and address of the employer who provides the primary pension for the respondent and/or spouse, a checklist for obtaining pension information from the respondent's and/or spouse's employer, recontact information, and non-interview reports. 
Cover Sheet (441 KB PDF)

Survey Questionnaire for the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances
The 1983 survey data were collected using a paper questionnaire. 
Questionnaire (5.3 MB PDF)

Survey Data

The full final survey data are available to the public in three formats. The first set of data are made available in two types of transport file. These files may be used with the current version of SAS. (Help is available for importing these files as SAS datasets.) One version is created using PROC CPORT; this is the smaller of the two files. The second one is created using PROC COPY with the EXPORT option; this file may be particularly convenient for users who do not have access to SAS, but who do have some means of translating the dataset to another form using a software package that does not support CPORT files. Additionally, the full public data set is available as a Stata data set and in ASCII format. All of these types of files are provided in compressed form as WINZIP files. (See PKWARE website for software to uncompress WINZIP files.)

Full Public Data Set: SAS format
Edited and Imputed Version
Missing data have been singly imputed, and the codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set.


WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting PROC CPORT transport file will require 9.7 MB of disk space and the resulting PROC COPY transport file will require 34.9 MB of disk space. When uncompressed and imported as a V6.12 engine SAS data set, these files require 39.1 MB of disk space.


Final survey data: CPORT version (3.3 MB ZIP)
Final survey data COPY/EXPORT version (3.9 MB ZIP)
Last updated April 24, 2003

Unprocessed Version
The original data have not been imputed in this file. The codebook provides more detail on the structure of the data set.


WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting PROC CPORT transport file will require 6.5 MB of disk space and the resulting PROC COPY transport file will require 29.4 MB of disk space. When uncompressed and imported as a V6.12 engine SAS data set, these files require 30.5 MB of disk space.


Original survey data: CPORT version (1.6 MB ZIP)
Original survey data: COPY/EXPORT version (2.3 MB ZIP)
Last updated April 24, 2003

Full Public Data Set: Stata format
A second version of the full public data set is given in Stata format.

Edited and Imputed Version
WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting Stata file will require 11.7 MB of disk space.
  
Final survey data: Stata (2.7 MB ZIP)
Last updated February 28, 2006

Unprocessed Version
WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting Stata file will require 7.6 MB of disk space. 
Original survey data: Stata (1.3 MB ZIP)
Last updated February 28, 2006

Full Public Data Set: ASCII format
A third version of the full public data set is given in ASCII format. The variables included have exactly the same values as those in the SAS data set. The layout of the variables is given by a format file, which is provided in Excel and tab-delimited formats.

Edited and Imputed Version
WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 78.9 MB of disk space. 
Final survey data: ASCII (4.1 MB ZIP)
Map of variables: Excel (156 KB Excel)
Map of variables: Tab-delimited (28 KB ASCII)
Last updated April 24, 2003

Unprocessed Version
WARNING: Some browser versions will download these files in unzipped form; the resulting ASCII file will require 68.2 MB of disk space. 
Original survey data: ASCII (2.4 MB ZIP)
Map of variables: Excel (189 KB Excel)
Map of variables: Tab-delimited (54 KB ASCII)
Last updated April 24, 2003

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Last Update: March 08, 2017