Life and Debt for Young Adults Coming of Age in the Great Recession

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 23. Young Adults, Family Relations, and Well-Being

Abstract

Postsecondary education is now the next step for the majority of high school seniors (Kena et al. 2016) As the landscape of higher education changes, the financing of this endeavor has undergone a major shift. For many, the onus of responsibility primarily falls to young adults and their families to finance this operation. And for many of these, student loans play a large role in facilitating the pathways to higher education. However, there has been relatively little qualitative work into how young adults understand their debt burdens and how these are perceived to compromise their futures. In this study, we qualitatively examine how a socioeconomically diverse group of young adults view their accumulation of post-secondary debt, both when enrolling in college and after, as well as their perceptions of how this debt will impact their ability to transition to adult milestones in the future. We find that while most respondents are accepting of debt at the time of enrollment, their inability to meet the demands of their debt leads to frustration and anxiety in later years. Further, respondents are indeed concerned that this debt will impact their ability to support themselves and transition into adult roles in the foreseeable future. As the inequality gap in the United States continues to widen for families, we argue that this is yet another way that families, and young adults, are likely to experience a divergence in family life.

Authors

• Patricia Tevington, Montclair State University

• Laura J. Napolitano, Rutgers University-Camden