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Title: Racial Disparities in Student Loan Debt and the Reproduction of Inequality
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Houle, Jason N. Addo, Fenaba |
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Racial Disparities in Student Loan Debt and the Reproduction of Inequality Presented: Washington DC, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2016 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Keyword(s): College Cost; Debt/Borrowing; Racial Differences; Racial Equality/Inequality; Student Loans / Student Aid; Wealth Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In this paper we aim to make three contributions to the growing literature on race and student loan debt. First, we ask whether racial disparities in debt change as young adults move through young adulthood. If black young adults are struggling with repayment, and also facing lower wages and higher rates of unemployment, racial disparities in student loan debt may increase as young people age. Second, we ask if parental wealth, postsecondary institutional characteristics, and young adult social and economic characteristics help explain why racial gaps in student loan debt persist, increase, or diminish across young adulthood. As part of this question, we will also ask whether the gap is largest, or increases faster, for students who left college without a degree (versus college graduates), 4 year versus 2 year grads, and for profit versus non-profit attendees. Third, we ask to what extent racial disparities in student loan debt contribute to black-white disparities in wealth among the current generation of young adults. As noted above, scholars have recently posited that student loan debt may be a new mechanism by which racial economic inequalities are perpetuated across generations, but to date there has been no clear test of this hypothesis. To address these questions, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997. We draw additional data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Delta Cost Project Database, which provides longitudinal information on characteristics of postsecondary institutions attended by NLSY97 respondents. We measure changes in student loan debt and wealth holdings at two points in time, using the age 25 and age 30 debts and assets modules. We will use regression models to examine changes in self-reported debt across these time points by race. We will also use decomposition techniques to quantify the extent to which student loan debt contributes to black-white differences in wealth. |
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Bibliography Citation
Houle, Jason N. and Fenaba Addo. "Racial Disparities in Student Loan Debt and the Reproduction of Inequality." Presented: Washington DC, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2016. |