Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program provides full forgiveness of federal student loans after 10 years of full-time employment in the public and nonprofit sectors with qualifying payments.While more than 34 million workers, constituting 23% of the labor force, are employed in these sectors, only a small fraction of borrowers have benefited from the PSLF program.In fact, by the end of 2022, only 342,898 borrowers had received PSLF benefits.This low take-up is attributed to historical design and implementation challenges, including difficulties in certifying public service employment and determining qualifying loans and payments.A year-long waiver issued by the Department of Education in October 2021 to address these administrative problems provided a new path to PSLF relief for many borrowers.Using data from the 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation, this paper explores the potential distributional implications of the PSLF waiver program, which expired in October 2022.The authors estimate that over $100 billion in immediate loan forgiveness was available to more than 3.45 million borrowers through this waiver program, with beneficiaries disproportionately employed in fields such as teaching and healthcare.Furthermore, the PSLF waiver had the potential to significantly reduce the racial gap in student debt, with Black Americans being particularly likely to benefit.However, evidence suggests that take-up of the program has been limited, and it has been more substantial among graduate borrowers and those with relatively high incomes, potentially resulting in a less progressive distribution of benefits.The authors also discuss how future distributional implications of the PSLF program depend on factors such as administrative innovations and outreach efforts to increase access to the program among eligible workers. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIGH-FATALITY SCHOOL SHOOTINGS FOR SURVIVING STUDENTS AND THEIR SCHOOLSThis paper examines the impact of high-fatality school shootings on the subsequent outcomes of the survivors of those events.We focus specifically on the shootings at Columbine High School (Littleton, CO), Sandy Hook Elementary (Newtown, CT), and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, FL).We assess the subsequent educational records, including attendance and test scores, and the long-term health consequences of surviving students.In all analyses, we treat the timing and location of these events as random, enabling us to identify causal effects.Our results indicate that these high-fatality school shootings led to substantial reductions in attendance and test scores.These educational effects appear to be larger than the effects of shootings with fewer fatalities estimated by others.Children who survived the Columbine shooting were more likely to die by age 30, particularly among boys.They experienced higher levels of suicide and accidental poisonings (overdoses).
DOI: 10.1002/pam.22628
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4402611202