Today The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) released the results of its 2011 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, which the U.S. Census Bureau conducts every 2 years.
The servey found that 28.3%, more that 1 in four U.S. households is either underbanked or unbanked. This is an increase from 2009.
But as usual the statistics vary widly by race.
“Unbanked rates are higher among non-Asian minority households than other racial and ethnic groups,” reads the study. Blacks for example have the highest rates of unbanked households at 21.4% followed by Hispanics at 20.1% and in contrast to Asian households that are at 4.0 and white households at 2.7%.
These discrepencies get worse when you factor in low income black families, almost half of whom don’t bank at all. “46.2 percent of low-income black households and 41.5 percent of low-income Hispanic households are unbanked, comparedwith 11.0 percent of low-income Asian households and17.5 percent of low-income white households,” reads the survey.
Here are some of the other findings the FDIC is reporting from this study:
8.2 percent of US households are unbanked. This represents 1 in 12 households in the nation, or nearly 10 million in total.
The proportion of unbanked households increased slightly since the 2009 survey. The estimated 0.6 percentage point increase represents an additional 821,000 unbanked households.
20.1 percent of US households are underbanked. This represents one in five households, or 24 million households. The 2011 underbanked rate in 2011 is higher than the 2009 rate of 18.2 percent, although the proportions are not directly comparable because of differences in the two surveys.
29.3 percent of households do not have a savings account, while about 10 percent do not have a checking account. About two-thirds of households have both checking and savings accounts.
One-quarter of households have used at least one AFS product in the last year, and almost one in ten households have used two or more AFS. In all, 12 percent of households used an AFS product in the last 30 days, including four in ten unbanked and underbanked households.