Anna Snider



With each new Liberty Street Economics post, we aim to build familiarity with New York Fed research and policy analysis, and to share the expertise of our staff when it is relevant to the issues of the day. More than sixty economists contribute, and we tap coauthors from other central banks and academia as well, so the topics vary widely, covering the alphabet of “JEL Codes” in the economics literature plus numerous policy themes. Judging from our internet traffic, we have a core group that checks in to read nearly everything. Some posts break out to a wider public, prompted by news articles that cite our findings and even a mention in a presidential candidate’s tweet. Take a look at our top five most-read posts of 2019.

Andrew F. Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Total household debt balances increased by $92 billion in the third quarter of 2019, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit from the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data. The balance increase reflected nearly across the board gains in various types of debt, with the largest gains of $31 billion in mortgage balances (0.3 percent) and $20 billion in student loan balances (1.4 percent). The Quarterly Report, and the following analysis, are both based on the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel, which is itself based on anonymized Equifax credit report data. Our report also provides breakouts by age, and by state, demonstrating that patterns of borrowing and repayment are heterogeneous by those factors. But there are many other dimensions across which we see varying credit market outcomes.

Andrew F. Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Student loans are increasingly a focus of discourse among politicians, policymakers, and the news media, resulting in a range of new ideas to address the swelling aggregate debt. Evaluating student loan policy proposals requires understanding the challenges faced by student borrowers. In this post, we explore the substantial variation in the experiences of borrowers and consider the distributional effects of various policy options.

Gizem Kosar, Kyle Smith, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Today we are releasing new data on individuals’ experiences and expectations regarding household spending. These data have been collected every four months since December 2014 as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). The goal of this blog post is to introduce the SCE Household Spending Survey and highlight some of its features.

Maya Bidanda, Rajashri Chakrabarti, Sean Hundtofte, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy



The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is arguably the biggest policy intervention in health insurance in the United States since the passage of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. The Act was signed into law in March 2010, and by 2016 approximately 20 to 24 million additional Americans were covered with health insurance. Such an extension of insurance coverage could affect not only medical bills, but also educational, employment, and broader financial outcomes. In this post, we take an initial look at the relationship between the ACA and higher education financing choices and outcomes. We find evidence that expansions in healthcare coverage may influence both the prevalence of student loans and loan repayment behavior. Specifically, our results suggest that individuals covered by ACA-related expansions are taking out slightly more loans and taking a longer time to start repayment.

A Conversation with Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz



With the 2017 college graduation season in full swing, we thought it would be helpful to take stock of the job prospects for recent college graduates. Is now a good time to be graduating from college? Publications editor Trevor Delaney caught up with Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz, two economists in our Research and Statistics Group, to discuss some of their work on the labor market for recent college graduates.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Nicole Gorton, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Evidence overwhelmingly shows that the average earnings premium to having a college education is high and has risen over the past several decades, in part because of a decline in real average earnings for those without a college degree. In addition to high private returns, there are substantial social returns to having a well-educated citizenry and workforce. A new development that may have important longer-term implications for education investment and for the broader economy is a significant change in the financing of higher education. State funding has declined markedly over the past two decades, a trend that has coincided with a significant increase in college tuition. To cover the rising cost of college, students and families have increased their reliance on student loans, funding a greater share of an increasing overall college cost. While the federal student loan program has undoubtedly helped mitigate the impact of higher costs on college access and enrollment, more and more students now leave college with higher amounts of debt. Given these trends, it is critical to understand whether holding student debt has affected young Americans’ later life outcomes, such as homeownership.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



An examination of recent developments in household borrowing was the focus of a press briefing held this morning at the New York Fed. President William Dudley offered opening remarks on the latest developments, then Bank economists briefed the press on their analysis of household indebtedness, placing a spotlight on student loans. Their research is based on the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel—which is based on Equifax credit report data—as well as data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The presentation contained three components: (1) an analysis how aggregate household debt today differs from its 2008 peak, (2) new evidence on student debt growth, delinquency and repayment, and (3) an investigation of the relationship between homeownership, student debt, and educational attainment.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Michael Lovenheim, and Kevin Morris

Editor’s note: The labels for “Elite private” and “Non-elite private, not-for-profit” institutions in the charts have been corrected; they were initially transposed. We regret the error. (September 12, 12:45 p.m.)



This is the final post in a four-part series examining the evolution of enrollment, student loans, graduation and default in the higher education market over the course of the past fifteen years. In the first post, we found a marked increase in enrollment of 35 percent between 2000 and 2015, led mostly by the for-profit sector—which increased enrollment by 177 percent. The second post showed that these new enrollees were quite different from the traditional enrollees. Yesterday’s post demonstrated an unprecedented increase in loan origination amounts during this period—nearly tripling between 2000 and 2015. This surge was driven most prominently by a massive increase in the number of borrowers in the public community college sector and the private for-profit college sector. Given the large increase in the borrower pool and loan originations, it is paramount to understand the consequences of these changes for the student loan default rate. This post aims to do just that. We focus on three-year cohort default rates reported by the United States Department of Education. The three-year cohort default rate is defined as the percentage of a school's borrowers who enter repayment during a particular federal fiscal year—running from October 1 to September 30—and default prior to the end of the second following fiscal year. Most federal loans enter default when payments are more than 270 days past due.

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Michael Lovenheim, and Kevin Morris

Editor’s note: The chart sources cited in this post have been corrected. (September 9, 12:55 p.m.)



In the first post in this series, we characterized the rapid transformation of the higher education market over the 2000-2015 period, a transformation that was led by explosive growth of the for-profit sector of higher education. In the second post, we found that most of this growth was driven by nontraditional students entering these institutions. Given this growth and the marked change in student composition, it is important to understand what impact these patterns might have on student loan originations, student loan volume, and the borrower pool in the various sectors of higher education. While a causal analysis is beyond the scope of this post, we instead examine descriptive patterns in these critical postsecondary outcomes. Was the growth in for-profit enrollment associated with a higher incidence of student loans? Were for-profit students, the main contributors of this growth, more or less likely to take student loans, and were they more or less likely to originate larger student loans? How about community-college borrowers, especially since community college enrollment increased noticeably over the period? This post focuses on these questions.