March

Main page listing all the articles / presentations at the 2025 Council on Contemporary Families Symposium.

Our research has examined how student loans have affected American borrowers, and how their behavior changed during and after the loan pause. Further evidence suggests that student loan debt is leading to delays in family formation for many young adults, contributing to the record low childbearing rates and the record high typical age at first marriage seen in the United States today.

Birth outcomes are strongly linked to income but proving a direct cause-and-effect relationship has been challenging. Our new study, published in Demography, uses the economic boom from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas development as a “natural experiment” to examine how community-level income gains affect pregnancy behaviors and birth outcomes.