To Have and to Hold: An Analysis of Young Adult Debt

Today's young adults often have been characterized as a generation of borrowers. But are they any different from past generations, or the current generation of adults, in the amount of debt they carry?In this Issue Brief Ngina Chiteji takes a careful look at debt in young adulthood, finding that, contrary to popular perception, most of today's young adults are not carrying an unusual or excessive amount of debt, at least not by historical standards or given their time in life, just starting out. The fraction of indebted young adult households age 25 to 34 has barely changed in 40 years, and while, in general, young households carry more debt than the population at large, this is consistent with the predictions of economic theory and most young adults appear to have manageable debt loads

Family Matters: Kin Networks and Asset Accumulation

Family Matters: Kin Networks and Asset Accumulatio

"Asset Ownership Across Generations"

This paper examines cross-generational connections in asset ownership. It begins by presenting a theoretical framework that develops the distinction between the intergenerational transfer of knowledge about financial assets and the direct transfer of dollars from parents to children. Its analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) reveals intergenerational correlations in asset ownership, and we find evidence to suggest that parental asset ownership or family-based exposure to assets affects adult childrenÕs decisions about bank account and stock ownership.

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 11, Issue 2, Summer 2022

The essays in this issue explore interdisciplinarity in the classroom and/or education. Our first contributor argues that making the economics curriculum more interdisciplinary corrects some common American misconceptions about Africa and encourages students to develop a richer understanding of both economics and Africa, while also teaching students that Africa need not be relegated merely to economic development courses and instead shows how Africa, particularly the Swahili Coast, was both inventive and innovative. In our second contribution, three authors writing together explore the power of storytelling in interdisciplinary learning communities, or cohorts of first-semester students enrolled in general-education classes that connect through a common theme. The authors detail how they developed their learning community around storytelling, while also arguing that interdisciplinary learning communities grounded in storytelling are high-impact practices that help students connect to their school community, classes, and to each other and to see their learning as relevant in their lives. Using two classification schemes (Biglan’s disciplinary classification scheme and Holland’s hexagon of occupational interests and personality characteristics) that are relevant for understanding collaborations between disciplines in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary education to analyze disciplinary collaborations in education, our third contributor measured the correlation between the two classification systems to determine the relationship between them. Based on the study, the author argues the two classification schemes and their relationships provide helpful frameworks for understanding disciplinary similarities and differences, while also providing important insights about how members of collaborating disciplines may complement or differ with one another