[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 181 (Thursday, September 17, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 58057-58058]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-20506]


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FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM


Agency Information Collection Activities: Announcement of Board 
Approval Under Delegated Authority and Submission to OMB

AGENCY: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

SUMMARY: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) 
is adopting a proposal to extend, for three years, with revision, the 
ad hoc clearance for the Survey of Household Economics and 
Decisionmaking (SHED) (FR 3077; OMB No. 7100-0374). The revisions are 
effective immediately.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Federal Reserve Board Clearance 
Officer--Nuha Elmaghrabi--Office of the Chief Data Officer, Board of 
Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC 20551, (202) 
452-3829.
    Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Desk Officer--Shagufta 
Ahmed--Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of 
Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Room 10235, 725 
17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20503, or by fax to (202) 395-6974.
    A copy of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) OMB submission, 
including the reporting form and instructions, supporting statement, 
and other documentation will be placed into OMB's public docket files. 
These documents also are available on the Federal Reserve Board's 
public website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/reportforms/review.aspx or may be requested from the agency clearance officer, 
whose name appears above.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On June 15, 1984, OMB delegated to the Board 
authority under the PRA to approve and assign OMB control numbers to 
collections of information conducted or sponsored by the Board. Board-
approved collections of information are incorporated into the official 
OMB inventory of currently approved collections of information. Copies 
of the PRA Submission, supporting statements, and approved collection 
of information instrument(s) are placed into OMB's public docket files.
    Final Approval under OMB Delegated Authority of the Extension for 
Three Years, With Revision, of the Following Information Collection:
    Report title: Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking 
(SHED).
    Agency form number: FR 3077.
    OMB control number: 7100-0374.
    Effective Date: The revisions are effective immediately.
    Frequency: Annually; On occasion.
    Respondents: The Board expects that the respondents would include a 
nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized individuals 
\1\ who are 18 years of age and older. Due to the nature of the third-
party vendor's respondent pool, this sample naturally includes repeat 
respondents, which allows for evaluating changes in respondents' 
economic conditions, as well as time series analysis.
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    \1\ Non-institutionalized individuals refers to individuals who 
are not inmates of institutions, such as those who are incarcerated 
or live in a retirement home, hospital, or other medical 
institution, as well as active duty military.
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    In 2019, the Board changed how respondents were selected to 
participate in the SHED questionnaire to more closely reflect a 
nationally representative sample. Thus, effective with the 2019 
questionnaire, the respondent panel no longer contained a low- and 
moderate-income oversample. Instead, the same number of respondents 
were interviewed but those respondents were drawn as a random sample of 
adults, rather than by attempting to sample a disproportionate share of 
low- and moderate-income adults. This change was made to obtain a 
respondent sample that more closely reflects the overall adult 
population and to reflect that these deviations from a nationally 
representative sample were no longer necessary for analyses of these 
populations given the current size of the SHED respondent pool.
    Effective with the 2018 SHED questionnaire, the respondent panel 
also no longer included an explicit sample of repeat respondents. 
Because approximately one-fifth of the vendor's total online respondent 
pool for the questionnaire is already comprised of repeat respondents, 
a substantial fraction of questionnaire respondents are repeat 
respondents without the need to have an explicit repeat sample.
    The Board plans to continue to sample a nationally representative 
pool of respondents without an oversample of low- and moderate-income 
individuals and without an explicit repeat sample group.
    Estimated number of respondents: Quantitative survey, 21,500 
respondents; qualitative survey, 30 respondents.
    Estimated average hours per response: Quantitative survey, 0.35; 
qualitative survey, 2.
    Estimated annual burden hours: Quantitative survey, 7,525; 
qualitative survey, 180.
    General description of report: The FR 3077 questionnaire is used to 
collect insightful information from consumers concerning the well-being 
of U.S. households and how individuals and their families are faring in 
the economy. The collected information could be used for the Board's 
Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households; Board studies or 
working papers; professional journals; the Federal Reserve Bulletin; 
testimony and reports to the Congress; or other vehicles. The SHED 
questionnaire includes such topics as individuals' overall financial 
well-being, employment experiences, income and savings behaviors, 
economic preparedness, access to banking and credit, housing and living 
arrangement decisions, education and human capital, student loans, and 
retirement planning. The overall content of the SHED questionnaire 
depends on changing economic, regulatory, or legislative developments 
as well as changes in the financial services industry.

[[Page 58058]]

    Legal authorization and confidentiality: Section 2A of the Federal 
Reserve Act requires that the Board maintain long run growth of the 
monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run 
potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the 
goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term 
interest rates (12 U.S.C. 225a). The Board uses the information 
obtained from the FR 3077 to help fulfill these obligations. The FR 
3077 is a voluntary information collection.
    Personally identifiable information collected on the SHED 
questionnaire, which would identify individual respondents, will be 
withheld under exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 
Exemption 6 of the FOIA protects information from being disclosed that 
would result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy (5 U.S.C. 
552(b)(6)). In the event cognitive interviews are conducted with select 
individuals to obtain qualitative feedback regarding an individual 
respondent's thoughts or reflections on the questions posed in the SHED 
questionnaire, both the questions posed to the individual respondent 
and their responses would be protected by exemption 6 of the FOIA (5 
U.S.C. 552(b)(6)).
    Current actions: On May 11, 2020, the Board published an initial 
notice in the Federal Register (85 FR 27742) requesting public comment 
for 60 days on the extension, with revision, of the FR 3077. The Board 
proposed to revise the SHED questionnaire by changing some of the core 
questionnaire questions to reduce the time respondents spend on 
specific questions by simplifying the language, as well as 
incorporating additional questions on emerging economic issues, and 
removing questions that do not require that new data be collected on an 
annual basis. The comment period for this notice expired on July 10, 
2020. The Board received one comment.

Detailed Discussion of Public Comments

    The one commenter expressed support for the data collection while 
urging the Board to include a general life satisfaction question in 
addition to financial satisfaction metrics. The Board agrees with the 
commenter's suggestion that general life satisfaction questions are 
worthy of consideration for the survey; however, because space on the 
survey is limited and the survey primarily focuses on financial 
outcomes, the Board has opted not to incorporate the suggested question 
into the proposed core question set. However, the survey instrument is 
structured to include additional topics beyond the core question set, 
which are included in the survey periodically. Recognizing the value of 
the commenter's proposed question, the Board will include the suggested 
life satisfaction questions as potential ad-hoc questions to ask this 
year or in future years of the survey, pending space on the overall 
survey instrument.

    Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, September 14, 
2020.
Michele Taylor Fennell,
Assistant Secretary of the Board.
[FR Doc. 2020-20506 Filed 9-16-20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6210-01-P