‘Lower-income college student adjustments to COVID-19’

ABSTRACT

Using a survey of mostly low-income upperclassmen at a large public institution, we focus on the perspective of young adults regarding financial decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that lower-income college students are weathering the pandemic by decreasing discretionary spending and increasing savings. In addition, we find most upperclassmen intend to finish their academic degree in the online learning environment.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• budgeting
• saving
• spending
• college enrolment

JEL CODES:

• D14
• E21
• G51

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ See, for example, Harjoto, Rossi, and Paglia (2020), Apergis and Apergis (2020), Cao et al. (2020), or Walmsley, Rose, and Wei (2020).

² https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/losangelescountycalifornia/RHI725218

³ http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/los-angeles-population/

⁴ http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/los-angeles-population/

⁵ CSUN Institutional Research

⁶ The survey is available here: https://csunbusiness.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bszjRfcpt6TgGX3