The short term effect of educational debt on job decisions

This paper studies the effect of educational debt on a college attendee's future wage and wage growth. I hypothesize that those who took larger loans to pay for college are subject to higher borrowing interest rates and thus prefer income profiles with higher initial earnings, sacrificing future income growth, relative to those who did not take on large educational debt. Using data for men in the 1987 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, I find that higher educational debt is associated with higher initial wage rate the year after finishing school and lower wage growth over the next 4 years.