This study examines student debt and its effects on the philanthropic behavior of households using data sets from the 2011 to 2017 U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The empirical results show that the presence of student debt on the balance sheet of a household is associated positively to both the probability of making charitable contributions and the amount of charitable donations. The study also finds that the amount of student debt relates positively to the total amount households contribute to charitable organizations. This paper finds no evidence of a statistically significant relationship between the amount of student debt and the probability that a household will donate to charity.
