Wouldn’t it be great if all young people got a college education, along with the resulting good job, and then got married and bought  a home?  That was the notion when Congress greatly expanded lending to college students in the 1990’s.   As we encouraged them to do, they promptly went to college, mostly brand-new, for-profit private “colleges” and received semi-useless degrees, which got them no job or an unexpectedly low-level job.  College debt now exceeds all credit card debt.  As I’ve written before, the heavy college debt makes them unqualified for the now-stricter mortgage approvals, and that is hurting home sales, which also prevents your home from rising in value more rapidly.

But, there is another perspective.  There has been “a massive new study” finding that, of the 9 million women who were in their early 20’s during the Great Recession, about 151 thousand of them will defer having babies until they are at least age 40.  The stated reason for this is “economic insecurity,” but I cannot help wondering how much of that insecurity results from the burdensome college debt we encouraged them to take.

One can argue that the best of intentions in the 1990’s will result in 151,000 fewer Americans.