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Using the 2007–2009 Survey of Consumer Finances panel dataset, we investigate whether and how changes in perceived income and saving motives are related to demand for household savings in the United States after the Great Recession. Households that perceive their current income as lower, relative to normal years are less likely to save than those who view that their income is the same as the reference point. This result holds only for those who experienced a significant negative income shock during the Great Recession. Among five major saving motives, saving for an emergency is an important factor in explaining the likelihood of saving. This study suggests that financial planners and educators should pay close attention to the role of households' income perception and saving motives and should account for the resulting potential psychological biases in households' saving decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of using bootstrap weights to account for the complex sample design in analyses of Survey of Consumer Finances ( SCF) datasets. No article published in this journal that has used the SCF has mentioned the issue of complex sample designs. We compared results obtained without weights and with application of population and bootstrap weights in a logistic regression, and found no substantial differences between the unweighted and the weighted analyses. We also compared results for an ordinary least squares regression, and found few differences between unweighted and weighted models. Unweighted regressions produced more conservative significance tests than the counterpart, and some econometricians have suggested that unweighted analyses are better for hypothesis testing. If estimation of the magnitudes of effects is important, weighted regression may be better because it produces consistent estimators. Researchers should be cautious in drawing conclusions when weighted and unweighted effects are substantially different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]