November 23, 2024

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The author has published a follow-up blog post, answering some questions raised by this report. You can read it here.
Some advocates have called to forgive student loans because student loans contribute to racial and socioeconomic wealth gaps. The usual measures of financial wealth, however, is a misleading indicator of the economic status of student loan borrowers. Medical school graduates typically owe six-figure student loans but that doesn’t mean they are poorer than high-school graduates who did not go to college. Wealth, properly measured, should include the value of educational investments students borrowed to make. Measured appropriately, student debt is concentrated among high-wealth households and loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, educational attainment, or wealth. Across-the-board forgiveness is therefore a costly and ineffective way to reduce economic gaps by race or socioeconomic status. Only targeted policies can address the inequities caused by federal student lending programs. 
Figure 1_Who owes student debt by income and wealth quintile
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Report Produced by The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy
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