Financial insecurity in Wisconsin

In 2017, American Family commissioned a survey on financial insecurity in our home state of Wisconsin. This gave us deeper information about the financial challenges faced by our neighbors, and their geographic distribution within the state, than had been available before.

The Survey

Previous surveys on financial insecurity either did not cover the breadth of topics we were interested in, or had limited detail on our home state of Wisconsin. We conducted a survey of over 4,000 Wisconsin residents, asking questions about

• demographics,
• financial standing,
• financial shocks and challenges,
• loans and financial services,
• insurance,
• employment,
• housing,
• transportation,
• child care,
• mental health, and
• support from friends and family

The resulting rich data set is available for exploration.

Using item response theory, we developed a scale of financial insecurity that allows us to segment respondents according to their overall level of need. We also extended our insecurity scale to the state as a whole. This allowed us to create very detailed visualizations of how financial insecurity is distributed within the state.

Key Findings

Among the things we learned from this survey and modeling effort:

• Only about half (52%) of Wisconsin residents say that they generally spend less than their income.
• 20% say that they are not able to consistently keep up with paying their household bills.
• 29% say that they were better off in financially in the fall of 2017 compared to 2016. 16% say that they were worse off.
• Among the 10% of most financially vulnerable Wisconsin residents:
  • 62% experienced at least one significant financial shock in the previous year.
  • 58% have neglected to see a doctor for financial reasons, and 37% have been hungry because they could not pay for food.
  • 86% say they are not at all confident that they could rely on family or friends in one or more types of financial crisis.

For more detailed information about how Wisconsin residents responded to our survey, please see our project report and our interactive survey exploration tool.

The Data

We hope the data that we have collected to support this project is relevant to the concerns of other researchers and policy organizations. We also know that the analysis and summaries linked below only scratch the surface of what is a very rich information source. We want this to be a resource for others, etc. By publicly releasing our survey data and some interactive tools for exploring it, we hope to create opportunities for collaboration and independent continuation of the work.

You can explore our data and findings further by consulting the following resources:

• An interactive bar chart for interactive exploration of responses to our Survey of Financial Insecurity
• An interactive map showing the distribution of financial insecurity in Wisconsin
• A technical whitepaper outlining the methodology and findings of our survey
• The raw, anonymized response data from our Survey of Financial Insecurity in Wisconsin, in CSV format

Banner image adapted from Madison morning skyline by Richard Hurd