When Megan Horinek graduated from Fort Hays State University in Kansas in 2010 with a marketing degree and $20,000 in student-loan debt, she dreamed of returning to her hometown of Atwood, 140 miles away.

After a stint with Kraft Foods in Wichita, she was able to move home this year, taking a lower-paying job in nearby Cheyenne County. Horinek was motivated by a new state program that offers as much as $15,000 toward student-loan repayment for people who relocate to areas beset by population declines.

“To know that I will be able to have my loans paid off within five years is even better than just finding a job,” said Horinek, 23, who works as a consultant for the Kansas Small Business Development Center.

State and local governments are joining some private and nonprofit companies in capitalizing on graduates’ concerns in a sluggish economy about repaying their student debt to attract new residents, talent and consumer dollars. Outstanding loans total about $1 trillion, topping U.S. credit-card debt. In Kansas, the perk has attracted 411 applicants representing 33 states, said Chris Harris, who manages the program for the state Commerce Department in Topeka.

“We were trying to address a loss of young population,” Harris said. People drawn to the state through the program will reinvigorate local economies by bringing families with them and buying houses, he said.

Among companies, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., which owns or operates hospitals and health-care facilities across the U.S., promotes loan-repayment incentives in its job ads. Some of Tenet’s facilities started offering the perk in 2003.

Students in health professions often graduate with high debt burdens, making companies with loan-repayment plans especially attractive. Physician-recruitment company Cejka Search has seen care providers, including BJC Medical Group, begin to offer repayment plans in compensation packages for physicians in the past few years.

“The need to use it has become intensified,” said Mary Barber, vice president for marketing at St. Louis-based Cejka.

Kansas allocated $1 million for the first year of its program, which applies to 50 rural counties that have seen a 10 percent population drop since 2000.

The guidelines for the Kansas program were designed to be as broad as possible, Harris said. Graduates with associate through post-graduate degrees can qualify for the program, which spreads payments over five years. Applicants must have established residency in a qualified county after July 1, 2011.

The city of Niagara Falls, N.Y., offers a loan repayment plan to lure young people, and Nebraska looked into creating one, partly out of concern that Kansas’ program would lure college graduates across their shared border.

More than half of Nebraska’s 93 counties have lost more than 5 percent of their populations in 10 years, according to the last census. The state considered offering $7,500 over five years to student debt holders who moved into those counties. Budget concerns kept the legislation from moving out of committee in the most recent legislative session.

“Most definitely we will lose a qualified, skilled work force to Kansas,” said Nicole Sedlacek, director of economic development for Holt County, Neb. The region saw an almost 10 percent drop in its population between 2000 and 2010, while neighboring counties lost as much as 22 percent in the past two decades.

The exodus has left companies struggling to find labor.

“We have jobs, but we need people to fill those jobs,” Chris Roth, president of Deshler, Neb.-based Reinke Manufacturing Co., told the state Senate Revenue Committee in January.

Reinke, which makes irrigation equipment, employs 500 people and was seeking 50 employees to work at a new facility.

College undergraduates from the class of 2010 on average left school with $25,250 in student loan debt, according to The Institute for College Access & Success in Oakland, Calif.

Loan repayment programs are a smart incentive because a similar program specifically for dentists, physician assistants and other medical professionals has attracted workers to Nebraska since it began in 1994, Sedlacek said.

Student-loan assistance is more common in health care than in other professions. Thirty states, including Maine, and Washington, D.C., have repayment or consolidation plans for dental or medical workers, according to a 2011 American Dental Association report. Several private health-related companies also offer the incentive.

Since 1972, physicians and other medical workers have been able to seek loan forgiveness for serving communities in need through the National Health Service Corps.

In an annual retention survey by Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association, 35 percent of medical groups surveyed had offered loan repayment to candidates in the past year, and they included it in about 25 percent of packages.