Student Loan Debt Common Across All Race, Gender Groups–Especially Black Women

By CEPR Photos: YouTube Screenshots Forty-three million Americans currently have student loan debt. This group of borrowers collectively owes $1.766 trillion, which is a 267.1% nominal increase from 2006 (Hanson 2023). The burden of student debt is not evenly felt. The data analysis above shows that among surveyed Black or African American people who have attended some college or higher, a disproportionately higher share have student loan debt than other racial groups. The share of student loan debt is also higher for women than men across nearly all racial groups. The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program in June 2023 that would have canceled $400 million for borrowers. Low- and middle-income borrowers would have seen up to $20,000 in debt relief (Howe 2023). In October of 2023, millions of borrowers were required to return to their repayments after a roughly three-and-a-half-year moratorium that began in March 2020. Who is the most burdened by these student loans? An analysis of data from the 2022 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) shows that among Black women who have attended some college or higher in their life, 43.3% had student loan debt in 2022. This is roughly...