The transition to the adult world with debt: characterizations of new economic insecurities of indebted young professionals in Santiago de Chile

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to explore how indebtedness increases the economic instability of Chilean young adults working as professionals who are unable to address their financial commitments. This is taking place within a context of sustained increases in consumer debt and the financialization of policies on higher education access. This is a descriptive analysis of the results of a survey created in order to characterize the forms of indebtedness and credit obligations of young professional debtors in Santiago, Chile. We use this to explore how the transition to the adult world using debt can destabilize the socio-economic status of young professionals. Our results show that a rather large percentage of these youths has more debt than income and that educational and consumer debts are the reason for late payments. They also have a harder time handling economic commitments when they have dependents. Young debtors are generally worried about their debt levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Debt
• student loans
• financialization
• transition
• young adulthood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

M. Constanza Ayala http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4478-1593

Notes

1 In 2015, during Michelle Bachelet's government, Chile introduced a policy of free access to higher education for 50 percent of the population from low-income families. Reference: www.gratuidad.cl

2 Go to: https://portal.ingresa.cl/estadisticas-y-estudios/estadisticas/

3 For more information, the law can be viewed at https://www.superir.gob.cl/ley-n-20-720/

4 The youth unemployment rate in Chile went from 16% in 2015 to 17.1% according to the ILO. Source: www.ilo.org

5 According to the National Statistics Institute, 417.98 thousand people in Chile have unstable work. Source: www.ine.cl

6 When this study was conducted, the survey was given only to young professionals living in Santiago.

7 There were no statistically significant results when associating participants’ default status with their socio-demographic characteristics. Despite this, the literature has shown differences in young people's debt situations and characteristics such as gender and race. We did not gather information on participants’ racial classification.

8 One $\mathrm{U}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{D}\approx 600$ Chilean pesos.

9 There is more detailed information in the various study sections.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT) under Fondecyt de iniciación n° 11150161: ‘La odisea de llegar a fin de mes: estrategias de pago de deudas en familias jóvenes de clase media en Santiago y Concepción’. Fondo de Fomento al Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico.