Tools: Created in Excel

Source: Federal Reserve System's Survey of Consumer Finances (2019)

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Education_Installment_Loans;demographic:inccat;population:all;units:have

Splitting the upper quintile into two bars is really confusing and misrepresents the data

Do they stay there? And they stay there. Up down, up down, up down. Cause all I do is win win win. And if you goin' in put your hands in the air make em stay there.

Why highlight this group? Seems like the least interesting piece here

Alternatively: the poorest people carry the least student debt.

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Alternatively alternatively: most of the debt relief will go to the more affluent people.

The data are beautiful but to your point this graph is not a helpful representation. See the other Debt post: [OC] The top 10% of borrowers hold almost half of all federal student debt

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Yes. Student loan forgiveness is a money grab by the most affluent earners.

Because higher income individuals have the ability to pay off student debt, so those aren’t as relevant. If you have 50k in debts but only earn 40k a year the debt will be a massive financial strain but if you earn 150k a year you don’t really have to worry about it

I think the assumption that 20-60 percentile, even up to 80, have that much free income is not as realistic as one might imagine

I don’t disagree with that but the bottom 20% are probably not gonna have any financial wiggle room at all

I guess what matters between our perspective is what message you want this data to inform.

Highlighting low income earners distracts from the message of "what income bands are affected by student loan debt" which is what this is informing in my head canon.

Debt modification/forgiveness is not a "poor Americans" issue.

If you earn $40k per year you pay very little under an IDR plan like REPAYE, which is 10% of discretionary income (income above 150% of FPGL).

I was thinking the same, but then got to thinking. This group is likely to have the highest ratio of debt to income so that would be bad. But then again they are also likely to be the group most likely to default and be in bankruptcy for one of MANY reason so maybe it doesn't even matter that they are carrying student debt? There are so many different ways to look at this data and extrapolate the meaning.

My guess, is this is likely: 1. The group who took on HUGE predatory private loans and 2. dropped out and didn't finish college so was a total waste even taking on that debt in the first place.

At first I was surprised that lower income means lower student debt.

But it makes total sense.

If you have more student debt, you studied longer and now have a higher paying job. The system is working. If it was inverted, and lower incomes were correlated with more student debt, I'd be worried.