Survey of Consumer Finances, 1977

This study concentrates on family finances and has four principal lines of inquiry. The first section of the survey updates the Surveys of Consumer Finances conducted from 1946 through 1971. Questions in this section investigate credit usage by consumers, trends in consumer finance, and debt burden. A second group of questions examines consumers' awareness, attitudes, and comprehension of the federal consumer credit protection laws passed during the decade preceding the study. Among the laws investigated are the Truth-in-Lending Act, the Equal-Credit-Opportunity Act, the Fair-Credit-Billing Act and the Federal- Trade-Commission-Improvement Act. Third, the survey offers general information about credit, credit procedures, and attitudes towards credit and creditors. Among the concerns are the degree of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the credit process, awareness of different aspects of credit and the credit process, and perceptions of differences among types of credit and creditors. The last section focuses on demographic information and includes data on family composition, life cycle stage, occupation, income, assets, age, race, marital status and residential stability.