ACCI Conference 2024

The proportion of all U.S. households without an account at a federally insured depository institution—the unbanked rate—declined by more than two-thirds between 1989 and 2022. Consistent with the trend in the national unbanked rate, unbanked rates among Black and Hispanic households—population segments with persistently high unbanked rates—also fell substantially. This research identifies key factors that contributed to long-term decreases in unbanked rates across race and ethnicity. The 1989–2022 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, which contain a rich set of characteristics that can influence a household’s desire to have a bank account, are well-suited for our analysis. To provide further insight into barriers to bank account ownership, and how these barriers might have changed over time, we use the 2013–2021 biennial Unbanked and Underbanked Supplement to the monthly Current Population Survey to examine time trends in reasons unbanked households cited for not having a bank account. We also study other key outcome measures in these data: methods that banked households used to access bank accounts (e.g., bank tellers and mobile banking) and financial transaction products that households might use to substitute for certain functions of a bank account (e.g., nonbank money orders and check cashing).

Author(s): Ryan Goodstein, Alicia Lloro, Jeffrey Weinstein