Middle-class attainment in young adulthood: higher education, student debt, and racial wealth inequality

Fenaba R Addo

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2024, vol. 40, issue 3, 518-529

Abstract: For whom is higher education an engine of economic mobility? How should we value post-secondary education in a society with extreme wealth inequality and massive student loan debt? This study examines racial wealth inequality in young adulthood, its relationship with higher education, and what it means to be middle class. Also discussed, is how the racialization of student debt is intimately connected with the racial wealth gap and how policies, such as debt cancellation, may disrupt the association between wealth and higher education going forward and provide an opportunity to address the damages this relationship has created.

Keywords: higher education; inequality; mobility; middle class; race; student debt; wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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