Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Starting with the 2024:Q2 Debt Service Ratio (DSR) publication, the Board will transition to a new, credit bureau data-based methodology for calculating the DSR, Mortgage DSR, and Consumer DSR. The new series can be found at https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/dsr/ and the new methodology is described here. An archived version of the old DSR series will continue to be hosted at https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm, but will no longer be updated.

Starting with the 2024:Q2 Debt Service Ratio (DSR) publication, the Board will transition to a new, credit bureau data-based methodology for calculating the DSR, Mortgage DSR, and Consumer DSR. Details about the changes are available here.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) program are working together to expand options for finding, accessing, and visualizing data from the Board's Data Download Program (DDP) in FRED. Learn more about the DDP and FRED partnership.

The Financial Obligations Ratios (FOR) statistical release will no longer be published. The release of 2023:Q3 data will be the final update. The Board has decided to stop publishing the Financial Obligations Ratios (FOR) due to a lack of high-quality data on property tax and homeowners' insurance payments. For users interested in adjusting the DSR for rental expenditures, data on rental of tenant-occupied nonfarm housing are available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Board will continue to publish household debt service ratios.

On March 26, 2023, the Federal Reserve will make minor changes to the format of all XML files released through the Data Download Program (DDP).

The Federal Reserve Board is conducting an online survey to collect data on online usage and consumption preferences of users of the Board's Data Download Program (DDP) website.

Visit our website to take the survey: https://boardofgovernors.gov1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1I95KuU02McZSwS

The Federal Reserve Board is conducting focus groups to collect data on online usage and consumption preferences of users of the Board's Data Download Program (DDP) website.

Visit our Contact Us page, enter your information, and write "volunteer" in the comment box to sign up: https://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/ContactUs/feedback.aspx?refurl=/ddpfeedback/

Starting with the 2013: Q3 Financial Obligations Ratio (FOR) and Debt Service Ratio (DSR) publication, to be released December 2013, we will publish two subcomponents of the DSR and cease publication of the four existing subcomponents of the FOR. The first new statistic is the Mortgage DSR, defined as the total quarterly required mortgage payments divided by total quarterly disposable personal income. The second new statistic is the Consumer DSR, defined as the total quarterly required consumer debt payments divided by total quarterly disposable personal income. The DSR is the sum of the Mortgage DSR and the Consumer DSR. Most users should find the new DSR components more useful analytically than the former FOR components. The FOR components are being eliminated because of challenges inherent in measuring them accurately. Publication of the total FOR will continue.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The data for the household debt service and financial obligations ratios (FOR) in the data download program (DDP), released December 13, 2011, did not include data through the third quarter. Updated data for are now available: http://www.federalreserve.gov/datadownload/Choose.aspx?rel=FOR. This correction notice pertains only to the data provided by the DDP.

Users can now view plotted data as column charts, and add U.S. recession shading, while using the "View chart" function of the Data Download Program (DDP).

Users will now be able to create and view interactive graphics of data packages from the program before downloading the underlying data and charts. The charting feature allows users to view multiple data series on a single chart as well as to display individual data points. The charts can be saved as PDFs or in a standard image file format (PNG) for publication and redistribution.

"Graphics play an important role in identifying data trends and relationships," said Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet L. Yellen. "With the help of this intuitive new user interface, it's now possible to create customized charts directly from Federal Reserve statistical data."

Data on household debt service and financial obligations ratios (FOR) are now available for customizable download through the Federal Reserve Board's Data Download Program (DDP). These data will be updated quarterly.