Debt Management and Investment Behavior Among Postgraduate Borrowers: A Systematic Review

Postgraduate borrowing is large and growing across higher-education systems, but little is known about how debt-management behavior, rather than amounts, influences investment outcomes. This review synthesizes, appraises, and sets a direction for research on the empirical, peer-reviewed evidence on education debt, debt-management behavior, financial literacy, and household investment outcomes. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 statement and its extension for search reporting (PRISMA-S), Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, EconLit, and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) were searched for 2000-2026, resulting in 998 records, of which twelve studies were included after deduplication and screening. A checklist adapted from Kitchenham and Charters (2007) and an adapted Risk of Bias in Non-randomized Studies of Interventions (ROBINS-I) framework were used to judge quality: scores ranged from 4.5 to 7.5 out of 8, with none at risk of bias. Education debt was generally associated with less ownership of stocks, emergency savings, and delayed homeownership. However, two studies using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) found no or weak association with the latter. None related postgraduate borrowers' debt-management behavior to investment outcomes, and the sole test of financial knowledge as a moderator found no buffering effect. Certainty of evidence was low or very low. The review highlights four areas for future research: identifying postgraduate borrowers in respondent-level data, directly measuring debt-management behavior, testing the moderation of literacy on investment outcomes, and using designs that disentangle delayed from suppressed investment.

Debt Management, Investment Decisions, Postgraduate Students, Student Loans, and Financial Literacy.

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