Thursday, October 10, 2019

Student Loans: How Much Is Owed?

Americans owe nearly $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, more than they owe for auto loans or credit card debt. But what is the maximum amount owed by individual borrowers? That's what the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis wanted to figure out. To investigate, Fed researchers used Equifax Consumer Credit Panel data, calculating the maximum loan balance for each borrower between 2000 and 2018, adjusted for inflation.

The median student loan balance is $24,899, according to the findings. But there is great variation in the amount borrowed. More than 20 percent of borrowers owe more than $50,000, and 5 percent owe nearly $100,000 or more. Here are student loan balances by percentile of borrowers...

Student loan balances
20th percentile: $9,703
40th percentile: $19,125
60th percentile: $31,312
80th percentile: $54,497
95th percentile: $99,025
99th percentile: $135,472

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Are Students Borrowing Too Much? Or Too Little?

No comments: