Fed unveils new tools for visualizing household wealth, other key financial stats

Example of data visualization from Fed tools unveiled Thursday.

New tools for accessing data about aggregate wealth of U.S. households and other economic sectors, using “data visualization,” were unveiled by the Federal Reserve Thursday.

The three new tools, the Fed said, show at a glance the evolution of key financial statistics, changes in household debt in recent years for each county and metro area, and developments in state and local pension funding for each state.

The tools access data from the Fed’s Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1) release, published quarterly.

The central bank said it will add more visualization tools in the future using data sets from its Z.1 release, and from its Enhanced Financial Accounts project, which it said “augments the Financial Accounts of the United States by providing information on additional types of financial intermediation, in finer detail, and at higher frequency.”

Federal Reserve Board adds interactive data tools for the Financial Accounts of the United States to its website