Income Contingent Loan with Personal Insurance Policy: An Empirical Assessment using Spanish Data

[EN] We propose an Income Contingent Loan that defers the payment of university fees and charges a fixed proportion of gross income for 30 years or until the debt is written off. Under these conditions, some participants in the scheme will have insufficient income to fully repay their loan balances....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Callado-Muñoz, Francisco José, Del Rey, Elena, Utrero-González, Natalia|||0000-0001-9304-3517
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/202517
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/202517
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Student loans
Insurance
Repayment burdens
Higher education financing
Returns to education
Government policy
ECONOMIA APLICADA
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] We propose an Income Contingent Loan that defers the payment of university fees and charges a fixed proportion of gross income for 30 years or until the debt is written off. Under these conditions, some participants in the scheme will have insufficient income to fully repay their loan balances. The deficit will be covered by the taxpayer, who ultimately bears the risk of investing in higher education. We then propose to transfer this risk to the student by adding a mandatory personal insurance policy to the individual loan. We calculate the premium required for the system to break even in Spain when everybody pays the insurance cost. Alternatively, the payment of the premium can be deferred, adding it to total debt. Then, some participants in the scheme will have insufficient income to even pay the insurance cost, and the premium needs to be increased to maintain the sustainability of the program. Although these mechanisms imply redistribution towards borrowers who end up being low earners, we show that middle-income individuals contribute a higher proportion of their incomes to covering for those unable to repay. To provide the system with more internal progressivity, we propose to impose a minimum period of repayment.