Ideally, I would like to find out, from a source that is as
authoritative as possible, the average percentage of income "saved" by
middle-income Texas families with pre-school children and a
stay-at-home parent.  By "saved" I mean the usual employer savings
plan, mutual fund, savings bonds, etc. - probably only excluding bank
"savings" accounts which are I think just a place to temporarily park
money these days.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce
reports current and historical "Personal saving as a percentage of
disposable personal income" for the country as a whole in its "Table
2.1. Personal Income and Its Disposition" at www.bea.doc.gov .

Between the BEA percentage and what I want I can find nothing.

I'm unable to find any source that gives savings rates for families,
much less with any demographic refinements such as income, family
size, parental age, geography, etc.


I will pay $50 for an answer that's anywhere close to what I want from
a credible source - for instance the average savings rate as a
percentage of income for the average American family with children at
home.

I would be pleased to tip up to $150 more for a more demographically
detailed answer from a government source or a set of answers from
academic or other (probably non-commercial) authoritative sources that
represent a concensus range.

Hephaestus

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Clarification of Question by hephaestus-ga on 23 Nov 2004 06:08 PST

I have apparently underestimated the difficulty of this question so I
have raised the fee to $100 for the minimum answer - still willing to
pay more for more detailed answer.  If you experts think this kind of
information isn't available on the web let me know. Thanks.

Hi,
I tried to answer your question, and visited BEA's page of the Survey
of Consumer Finances:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html
I found out that the most current SCF dataset available for public
use, SCF 2001, purposely contains no geographic identifiers; the 1995
dataset, on the other hand, contains variable X30074, '9-level Census
division code', value 5 of which marks households in AR, LA, OK and
TX. (Texas accounts for about 60% of the four states' population:
http://www.census.gov/population/projections/state/stpjpop.txt). My
attempt to find out about relevant surveys done by Texas government by
inquiring Texas State Data Center - look at a survey of theirs,
unfortunately missing saving info, at
http://txsdc.tamu.edu/txdata/pums/ - was unsuccessful, I was directed
to BEA, but you can try them, or forward your inquiry to a couple of
Texas economics departments, where it could be seen by a faculy member
or student with a comparative advantage in researching your topic.
Good luck!   

PS. A somewhat-relevant article I came across
    http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fn9801.html
    (referring to SCF 1995 data)  

           1. Northeast: New England Division (CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT)
           2. Northeast: Middle Atlantic Division (NY, NJ, PA)
           3. South: South Atlantic Division: (DE, DC, FL, GA, MD, NC
              SC, VA, WV)
           4. South: East South Central Division: (AL, KY, MS, TN)
           5. South: West South Central Division: (AR, LA, OK TX)
           6. Midwest: East North Central Division (IL, IN, MI OH WI)
           7. Midwest: West North Central Division (IA, KS, MN, MO,
              NE, ND, SD)
           8. West: Mountain Division (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY, NM)
           9. West: Pacific Division (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA)