IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/postke/v46y2023i1p173-206.html

Household debt, student loan forgiveness, and human capital investment: a neo-Kaleckian approach

Author

Listed:
  • Gustavo Pereira Serra

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the sustainability of student debt in the US. For this purpose, I build a neo-Kaleckian model in which households can borrow to either consume or invest in human capital. Next, I calibrate the model using US data to simulate the economic effects of specific policies such as student loan forgiveness. To my knowledge, this is the first study that considers household borrowing for two different purposes, consumption and human capital accumulation, in a demand-led macro-modeling framework. The main findings are that (i) household debt is sustainable in the long run (i.e., the debt servicing is compatible with the long-term economic growth) for a consumption level greater than 90% of household income; (ii) new borrowing boosts short-term economic activity while having ambiguous long-term effects because of its outcomes to household indebtedness and debt servicing; and (iii) student loan cancelation has only short-run economic effects, whereas reducing loan interest rates and changing the eligibility criterion for student loan forgiveness result in long-term effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Gustavo Pereira Serra, 2023. "Household debt, student loan forgiveness, and human capital investment: a neo-Kaleckian approach," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 173-206, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:postke:v:46:y:2023:i:1:p:173-206
    DOI: 10.1080/01603477.2022.2134035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01603477.2022.2134035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01603477.2022.2134035?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gustavo Pereira Serra, 2025. "(Trying to) catch up with the higher-skilled Joneses: student loans in a segmented educational market from a post-Keynesian perspective," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 172-203, April.
    2. Gilberto Tadeu Lima & Laura Barbosa de Carvalho & Gustavo Pereira Serra, 2024. "Human Capital Accumulation and Output Growth in Demand-led Macrodynamics," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2024_23, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP), revised 28 Aug 2024.
    3. Hiroaki Sasaki, 2025. "The paradox of technological progress, growth, distribution, and employment in a demand-led framework," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 542-574, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:postke:v:46:y:2023:i:1:p:173-206. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MPKE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.