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Chapter 3 examines the relationship between student loan debt and post-graduation living arrangements for college graduates in the United States, taking labor market factors into account. Using data from NLSY97, I explore both the parent-youth co-residence outcomes at a point in time and the dynamics of college graduates' movements back home. I estimate a random effects panel probit model and a discrete time proportional hazard model. The estimation results show that an increase in the amount of student loan debt owed at the time of graduation significantly increases the hazard of moving back home after graduation.

Chapter 4 uses NLSY97 data to investigate the factors that affect the amount of educational loans students borrow to attend college, with a particular interest in whether parental divorce would affect a college student's educational debt burden. The estimation results indicate that youths from divorced families are more likely to have a higher debt burden upon leaving school than youths from intact families. Among the youths from divorced families, those whose biological parents lived in states that permit courts to extend child support beyond the age of 18 for college expenses (post-majority states) do not seem to take fewer loans than those whose biological parents lived in non-post-majority states.