Studies have found that student loan debt was the only type of consumer debt to rise steadily during the Great Recession, writes Irene Lew, research assistant at The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“Many in the housing industry are concerned that unmanageable student debt is holding back Millennials from becoming first-time homebuyers,” Lew writes. So she analyzed cross-sectional data from the Federal Reserve Board’s triennial Survey of Consumer finances, which describes changes in debt, wealth, and assets at the household level.
