Description

BUNBANKED indicates whether someone in the household currently has a checking or savings account. Households that answer "No" are considered "Unbanked" by the FDIC.

In addition to indicating unbanked households, this variable serves as part of a sequence of screening questions to determine respondent households for the (rest of the) survey.

This variable is part of the Unbanked/Underbanked Supplement.

Comparability

The question wording is comparable across all years.

The question order and universe of the variable does change across years as follows:

In 2009 this question is the first question in the supplement and serves as the sole screening question. The universe is all households which agreed to answer the supplement questions.

In 2011 forward, two other screening questions are added: BFINSHARE and BFINPART.

In 2011-2015, these additional questions are NOT universe requirements for BUNBANKED. While respondents in multi-person households answered these additional questions, all continued on to BUNBANKED. Single-person households bypassed these two questions and went directly to BUNBANKED.

In 2017, the stated universe in the CPS documentation differs from the empirical universe. In the documentation, the universe in this year is narrowed to only include single person households and multi-person households that either have separate finances (BFINSHARE = 3), only one adult (BFINSHARE = 4), or shared finance households in which the person responding has knowledge of household finances (BFINPART = 1 or 2).

The empirical universe for BUNBANKED in 2017 is all single-person households and multi-person households where there is only one adult (BFINSHARE = 4) or adults have separate finances and respondents either have knowledge of the household finances or refused to answer whether they had knowledge of the household finances (BFINSHARE = 3 and BFINPART is not equal to -1 or 3).

In 2019-forward, nonresponses to Unbanked/Underbanked Supplement questions were allocated based on households with similar demographics. The data quality flag for BUNBANKED is QBUNBANKED.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables