College student loan debt and income inequality in the US: national and regional evidence

Nicholas Apergis ()

Journal of Economic Studies, 2022, vol. 50, issue 6, 1210-1225

Abstract: Purpose - This study explores the role of rising US student loan debt in explaining income inequality. Design/methodology/approach - The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling approach to explore the short- and long-run impact of college debt on income inequality in the US through quarterly data over the period 2000–2019. Findings - The results demonstrate the detrimental impact of student debt on national and regional income inequality. Moreover, the regional analysis highlights a more pronounced impact of student debt on income distribution in South and West regions. The findings document that these regions, with the lower student debt proportions, have the lowest average cost of attending college. Finally, the analysis explores two potential channels – i.e. race and homeownership – that could explain the link between college student debt and income inequality. Practical implications - The results can be helpful for policymakers and researchers to formulate practical approaches for assessing and addressing the rising national student debt and income inequality. Originality/value - This is the first, to the best of the author's knowledge, study that explores the impact of US college debt on income inequality.

Keywords: College student debt; Income inequality; US national and regional data; Autoregressive and distributed lag (ARDL) model; Mechanisms identification; D31; D63; I22; I23; I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jespps:jes-05-2022-0287

DOI: 10.1108/JES-05-2022-0287

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Studies is currently edited by Prof Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee

More articles in Journal of Economic Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().