American youth from rural backgrounds have made great strides to overcome challenges in college enrollment and completion since the 2000s. Yet little is known about how rural youth are financing these attainment increases—a pressing question in light of high college costs, rising student debt, and spatial inequality in the resources that students have to pay for college. This paper examines disparities in young adults' student debt by geographic background using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort. Regression analyses reveal that college-goers from rural backgrounds accumulate more debt than those from suburban and urban backgrounds, adjusting for differences in sociodemographic characteristics. Rural college-goers' higher debt can be partially attributed to differences in socioeconomic backgrounds and rates of inter-county migration during college, and there is evidence that the additive influences of geographic background and gender contribute to particularly high debt among rural women. The findings suggest that longstanding spatial inequalities contribute to disparities in student debt and raise questions about the experiences of rural youth and communities in a debt-based society.

中文翻译：

---

学生债务和地理劣势：农村、郊区和城市背景的差异*

自 2000 年代以来，来自农村背景的美国青年在克服大学入学和完成方面的挑战方面取得了长足的进步。然而，人们对农村青年如何为这些成就的提高提供资金知之甚少——鉴于大学成本高、学生债务增加以及学生必须为大学支付的资源空间不平等，这是一个紧迫的问题。本文使用来自 1997 年全国青年纵向调查的数据，根据地理背景研究了年轻人学生债务的差异。回归分析表明，农村背景的大学生比郊区和城市背景的大学生积累了更多的债务，并根据社会人口特征的差异进行了调整。农村大学生 较高的债务可部分归因于社会经济背景的差异和大学期间的县际迁移率，有证据表明，地理背景和性别的叠加影响导致农村妇女的债务特别高。研究结果表明，长期存在的空间不平等导致学生债务的差异，并引发了对农村青年和社区在债务社会中的经历的质疑。