12 years after starting college, white men have paid off 44% of their student loans, while black women owe 13% more

“We think of the ability to pay off student debt as only having to do with student debt,” said Mark Huelsman, associate director, policy and research at Demos and the author of the report. “We know the ability to pay off your loans has everything to do with wages and the ability to gain secure employment, it has everything to do with housing affordability, it has everything to do with child-care costs.”

Huelsman’s analysis is the latest to indicate that structural inequities mean that the student-debt burden is experienced differently by different types of borrowers and that a borrower’s demographics dictate in part how much of a financial benefit they get out of their degree. Undoing the harm caused by the nation’s $1.5 trillion student-loan problem requires a broader solution, like mass debt cancellation, he said.