The impact of student loan debt on small business formation

Brent Ambrose, Lawrence R. Cordell and Shuwei Ma

No 15-26, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract: Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and account for approximately one-half of the private-sector economy and 99% of all businesses. To start a small business, individuals need access to capital. Given the importance of an entrepreneur?s personal debt capacity in financing a startup business, student loan debt, which is difficult to discharge via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects and may have an impact on the ability of future small business owners to raise capital. This study examines the impact of the growth in student debt on net small business formation. We find a significant and economically meaningful negative correlation between changes in student loan debt and net business formation for the smallest group of small businesses, those employing one to four employees. This is important since these small businesses depend heavily on personal debt to finance new business formation. Based on our model, an increase of one standard deviation in student debt reduced the number of businesses with one to four employees by 14% on average between 2000 and 2010. The effect on larger firm formation decreased with firm size, which we interpret to mean that these firms have greater access to outside capital.

Keywords: Student loans; small business finance; Debt capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 H31 I22 I25 I28 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2015-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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