Working Paper: NBER ID: w13340
Authors: Todd R. Stinebrickner; Ralph Stinebrickner
Abstract: A serious difficulty in determining the importance of credit constraints in education arises because standard data sources do not provide a direct way of identifying which students are credit constrained. This has forced researchers to adopt a variety of indirect approaches. This paper differentiates itself from previous work by taking a direct approach for providing evidence about this issue which is made possible by unique longitudinal data that have been collected specifically for this type of purpose. Our results suggest that, while credit constraints likely play an important role in the drop-out decisions of some students, the large majority of attrition of students from low income families should be primarily attributed to reasons other than credit constraints.
Keywords: credit constraints; college dropout; low-income families; Berea College
JEL Codes: I21; I24; J01; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| credit constraints (E51) | college dropout rates (I21) |
| credit constraints (E51) | dropout decisions of some students (I21) |
| non-financial factors (G29) | college dropout rates (I21) |
| credit constraints (E51) | dropout rates for some students (I21) |
| attrition (J63) | reasons unrelated to credit constraints (G59) |