Economy
The Neighborhoods Buried In Student Debt
How much of your paycheck goes towards student loans?
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.