scholarly journals Help When You Need It: Sources of Advice for Student Loan Borrowers Across the Life Course

2021 ◽  
pp. 104438942110591
Author(s):  
Julie Miller ◽  
Alexa Balmuth ◽  
Samantha Brady ◽  
Joseph Coughlin
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Student Loans ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Student Loan ◽  
Loan Repayment ◽  
Professional Advice ◽  
Perceived Effects ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Multiple Domains

To promote the financial capabilities of student loan borrowers, practitioners must understand the experiences and needs of borrowers across the life course. A national survey ( n = 1,874) conducted by MIT AgeLab explored perceived loan-related effects across the life course and sources of advice for borrowers. Across age groups, repaying student loans had most regularly imposed negative perceived effects on multiple domains of borrowers’ financial well-being. Younger borrowers reported more negative perceived effects of loans across domains, whereas older borrowers reported fewer negative perceived effects. Few participants had sought professional advice about student loan repayment, although younger borrowers were more likely to have sought loan-related advice in general; perceived levels of helpfulness of advice and comfort consulting with contacts were mixed. Financial social work is uniquely situated to act as a resource for multiple generations of student loan borrowers and their families.

scholarly journals Parents, Partners, Plans and Promises: The Relational Work of Student Loan Borrowing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abby Stivers ◽  
Elizabeth Popp Berman
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Student Loans ◽  
Quantitative Estimation ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Student Loan ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
Economic Well Being ◽  
Debt Levels

When does student loan borrowing prompt relational work between borrowers and their family members? Research on student loans has focused on quantitative estimation of the effects of borrowing on educational attainment, economic well-being, health, and life course milestones. Drawing on sixty interviews with respondents working as lawyers in the northeastern U.S., we argue that student loans also have underappreciated relational effects, even for relatively privileged borrowers. Relational work around student loans is particularly visible during three important moments: the decision to borrow, the decision to partner, and when planning children’s futures. While scholars have examined the effects of borrowing on marriage and childbearing decisions, they have implicitly assumed that it is difficulty repaying that causes such effects. Attention to relational work, however, shows how debt can create additional burdens even when borrowers have the ability to repay, and may help explain why similar debt levels affect different groups differently.

scholarly journals Economic Inequality Over the Life Course: Causes and Effects of Cumulative Dis/Advantage Processes

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 585-586
Author(s):  
Jessica Kelley ◽  
Stephen Crystal ◽  
Jessica Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Student Loans ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Economic inequality has grown rapidly in all age groups in the past several decades. In each successive cohort, the wealth gap grows for young people and seems to accelerate faster over the life course. While rising inequality has taken its toll on Baby Boomers, we have become acutely aware of the increasing economic pressures across the entire life course (work precarity; student loans) that will manifest in the greatest degree of inequality in older adulthood seen to date. This session explores the forces that have shaped the degree of inequality among current older adults and are setting the stage for future cohorts of older adults. Presenters will explore several aspects of this issue: the growing state of the “risk retirement,” the impact of income inequality on later-life wealth and health, the structural racism written into economic policies intended to help Americans accumulate wealth and maintain health, and the market disadvantage for GED recipients compared to high school diploma recipients.

Folklore and Folklife of American Age Groups and Aging

2018 ◽  
pp. 844-866
Author(s):  
Mary L. Sellers
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Infancy And Early Childhood ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Pregnancy And Birth

Folklore occurs at every stage of a person’s life, and this chapter covers the way folklore and folklife across, and of, the life course has been studied. Six divisions in the life course that mark traditions of age groups as well as perceived stages in the United States are pregnancy and birth, infancy and early childhood, childhood and adolescence, adulthood, seniority, and death. Although much of the scholarship of age groups has been on the beginning and end of life, I demonstrate the conditions of aging in adolescence through the senior years that generate folklore and should be studied in relation to formation of age-group identity. This chapter emphasizes the use of folklore as an adaptation to aging. It examines the connection of folk traditions to the role that anxiety plays in the aging process, the formation of self and group identity, and the rites of passage that mark transitions from one stage to another. It shows that the presence of invented and emerging traditions indicates changing values and beliefs across the life course and encourages research in age-based research as a basic component of folklore and folklife studies.

scholarly journals A Faith to Move Mountains? Childhood Abuse, Religious Change, and Mental Health at Midlife

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 461-461
Author(s):  
Laura Upenieks
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Childhood Abuse ◽  
Childhood Maltreatment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Attendance ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Religious Importance ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract Of all the various forms of adversity experienced during childhood, childhood maltreatment (emotional and physical abuse) is shown to have the largest impacts on mental health and well-being. Yet we still have a limited understanding of why some victims of early maltreatment suffer immense mental health consequences later on in the life course, while others are able to cushion the blow of these early insults. Using two waves of data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), this study considers change in religiosity as a buffer across three dimensions for victims of childhood abuse: religious importance, attendance, and the specific act of seeking comfort through religion. Results suggest that increases in religious comfort during adulthood are positively associated with adult mental health for victims of abuse, while decreases in religious comfort over time were associated with worse mental health. Changes in religious attendance and religious importance were not significant associated with mental health for victims of abuse. Taken together, my results show that the stress-moderating effects of religion for victims of childhood maltreatment are contingent on the stability or increases or decreases in religiosity over the life course, which has been overlooked in previous work.

scholarly journals Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - Do East and West Germans still differ in their attitudes towards women’s employment and the division of housework?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gundula Zoch
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
East West

Previous cross-sectional studies show less traditional gender ideologies among East Germans after German reunification and even suggest slightly increasing East-West disparities. These findings challenge the assumptions of stable ideologies over the life-course as well as cohort replacement-based convergence over time. This study expands on previous research by analysing differences and trends in gender ideologies in the context of East and West Germany using data from the German Family Panel pairfam (2008-2018). It distinguishes between three cohorts born in the early 1970s, 1980s and 1990s who have different socialisation experiences before and after reunification. The results show smaller East-West differences in gender ideologies for the youngest cohort compared with larger gaps for the two older cohorts born before reunification. Convergence of ideologies is partly due to modernisation trends in West Germany and re-traditionalisation effects in East Germany across cohorts, but also due to attitudinal changes with age. Attitudes towards housework and female employment have particularly converged, while views on maternal employment and the consequences for children’s well-being continue to differ between East and West Germany. The findings underline the importance of persistent, long-lasting ideology differences due to the regime‐specific socialisation and composition resulting from the division of Germany, but also emphasizes the role of ideology change across cohorts and over the life-course for the overall converging trends in gender ideologies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document