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College Student Financial Stress: Are the Kids Alright?

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Abstract

An analysis of College students’ subjective well-being (SWB) and persistence behavior was conducted with an emphasis on financial stress and individuals’ perceptions of financial situation, controlling for a number of health, financial, and demographic factors. Data were taken from a sample of 324 undergraduate students from a major Midwestern university. Results indicated that students experiencing higher reported financial stress scored lower on a measure of SWB, and were also significantly more likely to report difficulty maintaining enrollment or number of academic hours enrolled. Individuals’ financial self-efficacy was positively associated with SWB and negatively associated with reductions in enrolled hours, though was not significant as a predictor of student persistence attitudes. Implications for student well-being and healthy campus initiatives are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (enacted), H. R. 627, 111th Cong., 1st Session.

  2. All figures in US Dollars.

  3. Alternative specifications were tested with regard to this question. In one case the measure of emotional burden was treated as a continuous scale and OLS was employed. This variable was also analyzed using cumulative logit due to concerns over the safety of assuming a continuous nature to a limited dependent variable. Each of the approaches yielded similar results, thus only the results of the logistic regression were included.

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Correspondence to Cliff A. Robb.

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Cliff A. Robb declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Robb, C.A. College Student Financial Stress: Are the Kids Alright?. J Fam Econ Iss 38, 514–527 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9527-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9527-6

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