Understanding and Using Data From the National Financial Capability Study

This article describes the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) and provides general and methodological information to aid researchers in using these publically available and free data sets. The NFCS is a large-scale, ongoing study aimed at monitoring and better understanding financial capability in America. Data from the NFCS can be analyzed at the national, state, and regional levels. We provide detailed information about all nine data sets that currently comprise the NFCS, including sampling procedures, weight construction, and survey design. The article concludes with a discussion of high-level learnings from the NFCS and the future of the NFCS project.