ABSTRACT
In the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada, student loan debt is one of the largest sources of household debt overall, and certainly the largest type of debt the average household owes to government. The burden of this debt on households depends not only on its level, but also on the repayment system. Fully income-contingent repayment systems such as those operating in Australia and the United Kingdom have been held up as a model for improving the repayment system in both Canada and the United States. In this chapter, I look at lessons that can be taken from a comparison of the relatively similar systems of Canada and the United States and suggest reforms that would ease the burden of repayment, in the United States in particular, that are arguably easier to implement than establishing an entirely new repayment architecture.
