Data on the Implementation of the 1958 National Defense Student Loan Program

This repository includes the code and data to construct a dataset summarizing the implementation of the National Defense Student Loan Program. This program began in 1958 and represented the beginning of the U.S. government's federal student loan program. We digitize measures from historical PDFs and calculate how exposure to the program varied over time and across states. These data can be used by researchers to understand the short and long-term impacts of this large and novel program on a variety of individual and state outcomes.