Student Loan Debt, Educational Attainment, and Tenure Choice.

Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS 2002), a unique survey that tracks High School sophomores to young adulthood, we estimate the relationship between student loan debt, educational attainment, and tenure choice. We improve upon prior studies by matching pre-treatment characteristics through coarsened exact matching (CEM) and jointly modelling the decision to leave the parental home and tenure choice. Our analysis suggests effects are large in magnitude and robust for degree non-completers that incurred student loan debt. Non-completers that incurred student loan debt are nearly 7.8 percentage points less likely to own a home than otherwise similar bachelor degree holders.