The Financial Health Network is collaborating with USC’s Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research to field Pulse surveys to their online panel, the Understanding America Study. Study participants who agree to share their transactional and account data use Plaid’s data connectivity services to authorize their data for analysis.
The Pulse draws upon survey data from USC’s “Understanding America Study,” a nationally representative probability-based internet panel. Annual surveys shed light on how financial health changes across the country and for individuals over time. Pulse survey questionnaires and data sets are available for researchers to download and explore below.
The Pulse also analyzes transactional and account data that USC’s panelists agree to share through a secure data platform that leverages Plaid’s API. Nearly 1,000 individuals have linked at least one financial account to the platform. The sample is broadly representative of the online banked population in the United States. To learn more about how these data are collected and analyzed, read this methodology overview.
From April 1 to June 30, 2021, Americans balanced saving and new spending opportunities, with minimal changes in earned income.
Recent research from the Financial Health Network published by the Brookings Institution also shows that most people who had not recently filed a tax return (a group that is more likely to have lower incomes) received their first stimulus payment at least two weeks later than those who had recently filed a tax return.