The impact of student loans on homeownership

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between student loan debt and homeownership. I hypothesize that a negative relationship exists, and control for a respondent’s age, household income, household size, race, gender, marital status, and level of education. Using a binary logistic regression model to examine data from the 2012 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) and the 2014 Survey of Household Economic Decisions (SHED), I model the odds-ratios and predicted probabilities of homeownership for respondents with and without student loans. I find a decrease in the predicted probability of homeownership by 8.4% and 9.3% in the NFCS and SHED datasets, respectively. While I find that a negative relationship does exist, predicted probabilities show that other factors may exert a greater influence on homeownership, which produces recommendations for future research.