Fed Staff Working Paper: And Banking for All?

The Federal Reserve has published a new staff working paper titled And Banking for All? by Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko, and Benjamin J. Keys. From the abstract: "This paper presents data from a new survey of low- and moderate-income households in Detroit to examine bank account usage and alternative financial service (AFS) products. We find that for the vast majority of households, annual outlays on financial services for transactional and credit products are relatively small, around 1% of annual income. This estimate is lower than those extrapolated by previous work using the posted fees of financial services alone, suggesting that LMI households do not always choose the most expensive financial services option."