Dive Brief:
- While 34% of white students who graduated from college between 2000 and 2014 had more than $25,000 in student loan debt, 50% of black graduates from the period carried the same level of debt.
- Only 22% of black college graduates in the 15-year period left their school with no student loan debt, compared to 39% for whites, according to a Gallup survey, part of a research project by Purdue University and the Lumina Foundation.
- Both races had 28% reporting some level of student loan debt of $25,000 or less when they graduated.
Dive Insight:
The percentage of graduates from each race reporting student loan debt of any amount has grown since the 1970s, with a 17% gap persisting between white and blacks. For blacks, the numbers were 48% in the 1970s, 63% in the 1980s, 67% in the 1990s, and 78% for the 2000-through-2014 graduates. Previous Gallup surveys have shown a link between large undergraduate student loan debt and lower well-being. In the area of financial well-being, only 17% of black college graduates in the 2000-2014 period were classified as thriving in the area of financial well-being, compared to 31% of whites.