Student Loan Debt In Your Area: What Does It Look Like?

Student debt in America is reaching historic levels.

The class of 2015 will graduate with an average of $35,051 in debt, according to MarketWatch, the highest rate in history.

“More than 42 million Americans owe a total of $1.1 trillion in student debt, making it the second-largest liability on the national balance sheet,” Mapping Student Debt says.

“A generation ago, student debt was a relative rarity, but for today’s students and recent graduates, it’s a central fact of economic life that we don’t know much about. Mapping Student Debt is changing that.”

Using data from Experian, Mapping Student Debt did just that — built a map that shows student loan and debt data at the zip code level.

They looked at student loan delinquency, average loan balance and median income in zip codes across the country to find some interesting trends.

Here are some of their takeaways:

• Areas with lower median incomes have higher delinquency rates, and vice versa.
• Areas with higher median incomes have higher student loan balances but are able to pay them off.
• Loans with lower balances are more likely to be in default than loans with higher balances.

To find specific loan and income data for your area, click here to see the interactive map. Then, type in your city or zip code.

Mapping Student Debt is a project of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which is part of the Center for American Progress.

• You can read the center’s full analysis of the data here.