Report
by
06 Nov ’23
The student loan repayment landscape has evolved rapidly, with many borrowers resuming payments for the first time since the payment pause began in April 2020. Here we analyze current publicly available payments data and share insights from a July 2023 survey by the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI).
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This survey provides a unique view into borrowers’ payment behavior in the months leading up to the resumption of payments, their reasons for not making payments (if they did not make them), their expected repayment capacity as payments resume, and the strategies they anticipated employing to afford their monthly student loan payments.
The trends we identify in the data suggest that the federal student loan borrower pool is highly fractured, with some borrowers likely to support their payments, some likely to experience occasional payment inconsistency, and others likely to experience continued, chronic repayment struggles that are not primarily the result of pandemic-related transitory financial shocks but rather are more systemic in nature. Consistent with CFI’s May 2022 report on student loan repayment, the pandemic-era blanket forbearance simply postponed a day of reckoning for those struggling with repayments that they consider to be unaffordable.
Our paper highlights five key findings from our analysis:
Education Finance
Report
by
13 May ’22
This report adds to our understanding of student borrower experiences with and future expectations of student loan repayment, forbearance, and loan cancellation using responses to the January 2022 and April 2022 waves of the COVID-19 Survey of Consumers conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Consumer Finance Institute (CFI).
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