“Longer than I Would’ve Originally Liked and Originally Thought”: Postsecondary Debt and Marriage Plans for Young Adults Coming of Age in the Great Recession

2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142110520
Author(s):  
Laura Napolitano ◽  
Patricia Tevington ◽  
Patrick J. Carr ◽  
Maria Kefalas

While student loans play a large role in the financing of higher education, there has been relatively little qualitative work on how young adults understand their debt burdens and the debt’s perceived future impact. We examine this topic utilizing a sample of 105 young people from working-, middle-, and upper middle-class backgrounds who experienced young adulthood during the Great Recession. While most respondents are accepting of debt at the time of postsecondary enrollment, their inability to meet the demands of their debt leads to frustration and anxiety. Further, many respondents are concerned that this debt will impact their ability to support themselves and transition into the role of a marital partner, although this varies across social class backgrounds and debt levels. We argue that this debt, and its corresponding repercussions, are likely to contribute to the continued bifurcation of family life in the United States.

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-206
Author(s):  
Daniele Tavani

This paper considers both secular and medium-run trends to argue that the US economy was already vulnerable to shocks before the COVID-19 crisis. Long-run trends have shown a pattern of secular stagnation and increasing inequality since the 1980s, while the economy has displayed hysteresis during the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession. The immediate policy response through the Coronavirus, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act highlighted the coordinating role of fiscal policy on the economy, but also showcased limits, especially with regard to the paycheck protection program. The historical trajectory of the US economy before the COVID-19 crisis cast serious doubts on recent cries of ‘overheating’ and inflationary pressures that should supposedly arise from the $1.9 trillion relief package just signed into law by President Biden. Projecting forward to the long run, redistribution policies may provide useful first steps in reversing the trends of rising inequality and declining productivity growth that the US economy has seen over the last few decades.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Demyanyk ◽  
Dmytro Hryshko ◽  
María Jose Luengo-Prado ◽  
Bent E. Sørensen

We use individual-level credit reports merged with loan-level mortgage data to estimate how home equity interacted with mobility in relatively weak and strong labor markets in the United States during the Great Recession. We construct a dynamic model of housing, consumption, employment, and relocation, which provides a structural interpretation of our empirical results and allows us to explore the role that foreclosure played in labor mobility. We find that negative home equity is not a significant barrier to job-related mobility because the benefits of accepting an out-of-area job outweigh the costs of moving. This pattern holds even if homeowners are not able to default on their mortgages. (JEL D14, G01, J61, R23, R31)


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristen Dalessandro

In this paper, I use interviews with forty-two millennial young adults in the United States to explore their understandings of the role of digital media technologies in their relationship lives. Despite coming of age in an increasingly digitized society, these young adults have a complicated view of using digital technologies to forge and sustain their relationships. They contrast the pitfalls of their own digitally mediated relationships with those relationships that are created and sustained without the influence of digital technologies. They assume the latter to be more organic, natural, less prone to trouble, and authentic, and often characterize the influence of digital technologies as impeding their ability to find good relationships. However, while projecting their relationship worries onto digital technologies helps young adults resolve their larger anxieties about intimate relationships, it may also have unintended consequences for how young adults think about social relationships and technological progress more broadly.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 396-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Hyun Shin ◽  
Kyoung Tae Kim

Using the 2007–2009 Survey of Consumer Finances panel dataset, we investigate whether and how changes in perceived income and saving motives are related to demand for household savings in the United States after the Great Recession. Households that perceive their current income as lower, relative to normal years are less likely to save than those who view that their income is the same as the reference point. This result holds only for those who experienced a significant negative income shock during the Great Recession. Among five major saving motives, saving for an emergency is an important factor in explaining the likelihood of saving. This study suggests that financial planners and educators should pay close attention to the role of households’ income perception and saving motives and should account for the resulting potential psychological biases in households’ saving decisions.


Author(s):  
Stefan Homburg

Chapter 6 examines real estate as a neglected feature of actual economies. It begins with an empirical overview demonstrating the preeminent role of land as a part of nonfinancial wealth. Whereas many macroeconomic models represent nonfinancial wealth by a symbol K that is interpreted as machines and equipment (if not robots), the text makes clear that such items are of minor quantitative importance. In contemporary economies, nonfinancial wealth consists chiefly of real estate. This is the proper reason so many analysts conjecture a link between house prices and the Great Recession. Changes in house prices (primarily changes in land prices) operate on the economy through their influence on nonfinancial wealth. Nonfinancial wealth affects consumption directly and investment indirectly since it relaxes or tightens borrowing constraints. Building on the results obtained in previous chapters, the text studies housing manias and leverage cycles and relates its main findings to US data.


Author(s):  
Abraham L. Newman ◽  
Elliot Posner

Chapter 6 examines the long-term effects of international soft law on policy in the United States since 2008. The extent and type of post-crisis US cooperation with foreign jurisdictions have varied considerably with far-reaching ramifications for international financial markets. Focusing on the international interaction of reforms in banking and derivatives, the chapter uses the book’s approach to understand US regulation in the wake of the Great Recession. The authors attribute seemingly random variation in the US relationship to foreign regulation and markets to differences in pre-crisis international soft law. Here, the existence (or absence) of robust soft law and standard-creating institutions determines the resources available to policy entrepreneurs as well as their orientation and attitudes toward international cooperation. Soft law plays a central role in the evolution of US regulatory reform and its interface with the rest of the world.


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