The Department of ED made public student debt relief application data broken down by congressional district. Below are resources and key highlights on the data. Please help us share these with your networks.
Application data by Congressional District
Key points re: congressional district level SDR data:
Overall, more than 40 million borrowers would qualify for the Biden Administration’s debt relief program.
In the less than four weeks that the application was available, 26 million people either applied for debt relief or had already provided sufficient information to the Department of Education to be deemed eligible for relief.More than 16 million of those borrowers’ applications were fully approved by the Department and sent to loan servicers.
Across the country, in every Congressional district there is a strong desire for the Biden-Harris Administration’s one-time debt relief program
In every single Congressional district, at least half of eligible borrowers either applied or were deemed auto-eligible for debt relief, and that was only in the one month that the application was available before the program got blocked because of lawsuits.
This underscores strong interest in the program – and the program was blocked before meaningful and robust outreach to encourage borrowers to apply could take place.
In every single Congressional district, at least 30% of eligible borrowers were fully approved for debt relief and their information was sent to loan servicers to have their debt discharged before the program was blocked. These borrowers – and more – could be experiencing relief right now were it not for meritless lawsuits brought by opponents of the debt relief program, and in some cases these borrowers’ own Members of Congress opposing relief for their constituents.
The data being released today demonstrates that student debt relief program is targeted toward lower income borrowers,and that borrowers in the bottom 80 percent of average income Congressional Districts submitted more applications on average than the highest income Districts.
81% of all applications came from the bottom 80 percent of Congressional Districts when broken down by average income.
When broken down by average income, the bottom 80 percent of Congressional districts, respectively, have moreeligible borrowers than the top 20 percent of districts highest income districts, respectively.
Overall there is a negative correlation between Congressional District average income and numbers of eligible borrowers, meaning that higher income districts tend to have fewer eligible people.
