Housing
The Booming, Busting Geography of College Enrollment
As home values fluctuate, so too does a family's ability to borrow money to pay for school
The housing market’s boom from the late-1990s to the mid-2000s set up an epic crumble at the end of the decade, but it also might have helped put a lot more kids in college—depending on where they lived.
New research from Cornell University economist Michael F. Lovenheim explores how rising home values enabled families – especially lower income families – to borrow against home values to fund their kids’ college educations.