What It's Like Not to Be Able to Pay Your Student Loans

The share of Americans defaulting on their student loans or putting them off for years is increasing, as New America Foundation researcher Jason Delisle argued in the Wall Street Journal last year. What's it like not to be able to pay your student-loan debt? Lots of viral articles have tried answering the question, but those stories tend to pull examples from the extreme end of the spectrum. A new report, published this week by the New America Foundation, relies on focus groups of ordinary borrowers to seek out a more realistic, and useful, answer.