Higher education is supposed to be the great equalizer, the one-way ticket to the security and prosperity of the middle class. But with 44 million Americans struggling with more than $1.4 trillion of student debt, the very thing that’s supposed to level out the playing field, in fact, makes disparities a lot worse.
A new interactive map released today by Generation Progress, the youth-engagement arm of the Center for American Progress, breaks down average student debt burden—the percent of income spent on student loan payments—for each zip code across the nation. As the third installation of the Mapping Student Debt project, the map aims to highlight exactly which neighborhoods feels the most debt pressure in their everyday spending.
Americans pay an average of 6 percent of each paycheck toward student loans, but in large cities that tend to have more young and low-income borrowers, like New York City or Washington, D.C., debt burden can surpass 10 percent. That’s way more than the 5.5 percent of a paycheck that Americans typically spend on groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Researchers found that debt […]
