“Young people with student loans are less likely to buy a house,” said Wilbert van der Klaauw, a senior vice president of the New York Fed’s research and statistics group.

Those with student loan debt also are less likely to have taken out car loans. They have worse credit scores. They appear to be more likely to be living with their parents.

In other types of personal loans, those who owe the most are the most likely to default, for obvious reasons. But the opposite is true for student loans. “This suggests that borrowers who default are overwhelmingly noncompleters,” said Rohit Chopra, the student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “These borrowers take on some debt but do not benefit from the wage increase associated with a degree.”

A lot of people are defaulting. The New York Fed report shows that while seriously delinquent personal loans have generally been declining since early 2010, delinquent student loans have been soaring. The report, for the fourth quarter of 2013, showed that 11.5 percent of such loans were at least 90 days behind in payments. In credit cards, traditionally the type of loan most likely to default, the rate was just 9.5 percent.