Insights into Consumers’ Financial Standing and Distress from 2019-2022: Evidence from a CDFI

Abstract

Consumers are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic into an economically tumultuous period marked by high inflation and other threats to financial security. How has the financial standing of America’s consumers, including those who are economically distressed, changed in response to the economic events of the past several years? In this report, we analyze changes in consumers’ bank account balances across the months leading up to the pandemic, through two years of a pandemic economy punctuated by federal stimulus payments and expansions of other federal benefits, and into months characterized by high rates of inflation. We pay particular attention to the finances of consumers with lower account balances and markers of financial distress within the context of these recent economic events.