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Brief

Federal Student Loan Debt Among LGBTQ People

July 2021
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Using data collected in the Access to Higher Education Survey, researchers from the Williams Institute in collaboration with the Point Foundation examine student loan debt among  LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ individuals.

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Highlights
LGBTQ adults are more likely to have federal student loans than non-LGBTQ adults.
More than a third of LGBTQ adults ages 18 to 40 are carrying more than $93 billion in federal student loans.
Over half of transgender adults have federal student loans.
Data Points
39%
of LGBTQ adults have student debt
2.9M
LGBTQ adults have federal student loans
$93B
total debt carried by LGBTQ adults
84%
of LGBTQ adults owe less than $50,000 in federal student loans
16%
owe $50,000 or more
51%
of transgender adults have federal student loans
36%
of LBQ cisgender females have federal student loans
28%
of cisgender GBQ males have loans
43%
of LGBTQ adults who have federal student loans also have private student loan debt
Brief

Overview

An estimated 42.9 million Americans,1 particularly younger adults,2 have student debt. On average they owe $32,731, with variability by race/ethnicity and gender. Black college graduates owe $25,000 more than their White counterparts; women hold about two-thirds of all student debt.3 4 5

Concern about the burden of student debt has been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to college closures and economic turbulence generated by the pandemic, policymakers suspended federal student loan payments and set the interest rate on federal student loans at 0%.6 7 To provide further relief, Congress is currently considering forgiving federal student loan debt of $10,000 to $50,000 per borrower.8 9 

Information about student debt among LGBTQ adults is missing from student loan forgiveness discussions.10  Using data collected from U.S. adults on the 2021 nationally representative Access to Higher Education Project survey, this brief aims to fill gaps in knowledge about student debt, with an emphasis on federal student loans, among LGBTQ adults ages 18-40. Additional details about study methods, as well as detailed tables about federal loans, are included in the Appendix. 

Student Debt

  • Over a third (39.4%) of LGBTQ adults ages 18 to 40 have student debt in the form of federal student loans, private student loans from a bank or other lending institution, or from credit cards or other loans. 
  • Most (90.0%) of these adults have federal student loans. Thus, the remainder of this fact sheet focuses on federal student loan debt and debt among federal loan holders. 

Federal Student Loans

  • More than a third (35.4%) of LGBTQ adults ages 18 to 40, an estimated 2.9 million adults, are holding more than $93.2 billion in federal student loans.11  
  • Of these 2.9 million LGBTQ federal student loan holders, about a third (32.0%) owe less than $10,000, about half (51.7%) owe between $10,000 to under $50,000 and the remainder (16.3%) owe $50,000 or more in federal student loans. 
  • LGBTQ adults are more likely to have federal student loans than non-LGBTQ adults (35.4% vs. 23.2%); these differences persist even after taking into account differences in the age composition of the two groups (age-adjusted Odds Ratio 1.8; 95% Confidence Interval, 1.3, 2.5).
  • Over half (51.0%) of transgender adults, 35.9% of LBQ cisgender females, and 27.9% of cisgender GBQ males have federal student loans 
  • About a third of LGBTQ White (37.0%) and LGBTQ people of color (33.3%) have federal student loans.
  • Almost half (48.7%) of LGBTQ adults who have been in a Bachelor’s degree program and 17.0% of those who pursued higher education in community college or trade school have federal student loans.
  • Many (45.6%) current LGBTQ students and almost a third (31.4%) of LGBTQ adults who are not current students have federal loans. 

Total Educational Debt Among Federal Student Loan Holders 

  • About 4 out of 10 (42.5%) LGBTQ adults holding federal student loans also have student debt in the form of private student loans from a bank or other lending institution, credit cards, or other loans. 

Note: Categorical responses for private loans and other debt questions were set to the mid-point (200K for the highest category) and then summed and recoded into categories to obtain level of non-federal student debt. 

  • LGBTQ adults ages 18 to 40 with federal student loans owe an average (mean) of $34,000 in federal loans and $47,500 in total student debt. 
  • Among those with federal loan debt, half of LGBTQ adults have more than $14,500 in federal loans and $35,000 or more in total student debt. 

Note: Categorical responses for each student debt question were set to the mid-point (200K for the highest category) and then summed to obtain total student debt. 

Download the full brief

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Federal Student Loan Debt Among LGBTQ People
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Office of Federal Student Aid. “Federal Student Aid Portfolio Summary.” Federal Student Aid, studentaid.gov/data-center/student/ portfolio. 

 Cilluffo, Anthony. “5 Facts about Student Loans.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 13 Jan. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/13/facts-about-student-loans/. 

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2016 – May 2017.” Federal Reserve, www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2017-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2016-education-debt-loans.htm. 

 White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Fact Sheet: Black College Graduates and the Student Debt Gap. https://sites.ed.gov/whieeaa/files/2016/11/Black-College-Graduates-and-the-Student-Debt-Gap.pdf 

American Association of University Women. “Deeper in Debt: Women & Student Loans .” American Association of University Women, 1 June 2021, www.aauw.org/resources/research/deeper-in-debt/. 

United States, Congress, Cong. House, House – Ways and Means. Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or the CARES Act, 116AD. 116th Congress Congress, bill H.R.748. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748 

The White House. “Pausing Federal Student Loan Payments.” The United States Government, 21 Jan. 2021, www.whitehouse.gov/ briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/20/pausing-federal-student-loan-payments/.

Egan, Lauren. “‘I Will Not Make That Happen’: Biden Declines Democrats’ Call to Cancel $50K in Student Debt.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 17 Feb. 2021, www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/i-will-not-make-happen-biden-declines-democrats-call-cancel-n1258069. 

Senator Warren, House Majority Whip Clyburn Introduce Legislation to Cancel Student Loan Debt for Millions of Americans: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.” Senator Warren, House Majority Whip Clyburn Introduce Legislation to Cancel Student Loan Debt for Millions of Americans | U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, 23 July 2019, www.warren.senate.gov/ newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-house-majority-whip-clyburn-introduce-legislation-to-cancel-student-loan-debt-for-millions-of-americans. 

However, it is known that LGBTQ people are more likely than their non-LGBTQ counterparts to be living in poverty. Badgett, M.V.L., S.K. Choi, & B.D.M. Wilson. (2019). LGBT Poverty in the United States: A Study of Differences between Sexual orientation and Gender identity Groups. The Williams Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/National-LGBT-Poverty-Oct-2019.pdf 

The Williams Institute estimates that 2,904,000 U.S. LGBTQ adults ages 18-40 have federal student loans (range: 2,407,000 to 3,458,000). We derived these estimates by first determining the number of 18-40-year-old LGBTQ adults in the U.S. (8,436,852 or 8.1% of 101,185,561 U.S. adults ages 18 to 40 as per the 2017 Gallup Daily Tracking Poll and the 2017 U.S. Census population projections reported in Table PEPSYASEX, respectively). We then multiplied this estimate with the percentage (35.4%) of 18–40-year-old LGBTQ adults with federal student debt in the Access to Higher Education Survey. Ranges around our estimates were obtained by multiplying the 95% confidence intervals for the percent who have federal loans to the 95% confidence intervals for the estimated number of LGBT adults. All estimates were rounded to the nearest 1,000. 

In order to estimate the amount of federal loan debt held by all LGBTQ adults ages 18 to 40 ($93,241,883,000), we took the weighted sum of federal loan debt held by Access to Higher Education Survey participants (n=214). Categorical responses were set to the mid-point (200K for the highest category) and then summed. We then scaled that value to the estimated number of LGBTQ adults with federal student loans (N=2,903,902).