Do Income Contingent Student Loan Programs Distort Earnings? Evidence from the UK / Jack W. Britton, Jonathan Gruber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Britton, Jack (Economist)

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gruber, Jonathan.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25822.

NBER working paper series no. w25822

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Government backed income contingent student loans are an increasingly being used to fund higher education. An income contingent repayment plan acts as an incremental marginal tax on labor earnings, which could cause individuals to distort their work effort. This paper uses an administrative dataset from the UK that links student loan borrowers between 1998 and 2008, to their official tax records between 2001/02 and 2013/14. Using a combination of techniques, including bunching and difference-in-difference methodology, our findings strongly reject the hypothesis that the UK's income-contingent repayment plan distorts labor supply.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2019.