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President Joe Biden’s recently announced student debt forgiveness could impact states differently.
Several states in the South and Midwest have the largest shares of their populations eligible for relief.
Ohio and Mississippi have the highest shares among states, but their shares fall below DC’s share.
Student-loan borrowers in all 50 states and DC will stand to benefit from President Joe Biden’s recent debt relief.
At the end of August, Biden announced up to $20,000 in debt cancellation for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year — a highly anticipated announcement, given he promised relief on the campaign trail. Eligible Pell Grant recipients will see up to the full $20,000 in debt relief; those who fall below the income cutoff and who aren’t Pell Grant recipients will receive up to $10,000 in relief. Most borrowers will have to apply for relief through a form set to be released in early October.
The White House recently released state-by-state data on how many people could be eligible for forgiveness, and the scope of borrowers who are on track to benefit is significant.
The estimated share of a state’s population that is eligible for student loan forgiveness varies across the US.
Insider looked at how many people could be eligible for student loan forgiveness after adjusting by population. To do this, Insider looked at the estimated number of borrowers eligible according to the Department of Education that was recently published in the White House fact sheet. Those estimated values were rounded to the nearest hundred. We also used July 1, 2021 population estimate data from the Census Bureau.
As seen in the below map, multiple states in the middle of the country, the Midwest, and the South have some of the highest shares. You can hover over each state and DC to see the population size, the rounded number of potential borrowers eligible for relief, and the estimated share of a population eligible for student loan debt relief.
Ohio is one Midwestern state that has a high share, with an estimated 14.2% of residents eligible for student-debt relief. That’s the second highest share among states and DC, falling right after DC’s 15.8%. As The Columbus Dispatch reported, over 94% of student loan borrowers in Ohio could be eligible for this student loan relief.
Looking just at the estimated number of eligible borrowers, California leads the list with 3,549,300 borrowers estimated to be eligible for the relief — along with 2,340,600 Pell Grant recipients — followed by Texas and Florida. An Education Department official told reporters during a press call last week that these estimates were based on “commonly employed statistical techniques” to estimate borrowers’ income, along with Census data that has detailed information on income for specific groups of people.
“The analysis we are releasing today tells us that President Biden’s debt relief plan will touch working families in every corner of the state of the country, in red states and blue states and everywhere in between, states and big cities, sprawling suburbs, tribal lands and remote rural towns,” Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal told reporters. “Nearly 20 million borrowers will have their entire balances discharged, others will benefit from lower balances and lower payments.”
Although California may have millions of borrowers estimated to be eligible for this relief, it actually has one of the smallest shares of people eligible for relief when adjusting for its large population.
Even in the states where Republicans have opposed Biden’s debt relief, millions of borrowers could benefit. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley told reporters that “I was emotional walking through these numbers with my team, recognizing that behind every number, there is a person, there’s a family, there’s a story here.”