The Bank of England / NMG Survey of Household Finances

Every year since 2004, the Bank of England has commissioned NMG Consulting to carry out a survey on household finances. This paper describes the NMG Survey, its methodology, and its advantages and disadvantages relative to other surveys. The NMG Survey is useful in providing a timelier guide to developments in the distribution of household balance sheets than other surveys, it appears better at measuring financial distress, and it includes questions on topical policy issues that are often not available in other surveys. A drawback of the NMG Survey is that there may be a greater risk of selection into the survey based on unobservable characteristics than is the case for some other household surveys.