Student Loan Killer Debt: How The Dallas Area Ranks
U.S. student loan debt hit a staggering all-time high of $1.36 trillion in the third quarter of 2018, more than doubling in the past 10 years, according to new data. In Texas, students carry a debt load of $103 billion. Of that, students in the Dallas area owe $3 billion for their educations.
The study by the consumer credit reporting agency Experian looks at both the actual student loan debt and the rate it has increased over the past decade, ending in the third quarter of 2018.
Nationwide, student loan debt has increased 129 percent since 2008 and represents the second-largest credit debt for Americans, trailing only mortgage loans. Nationally, there are more than 145 million outstanding student loan accounts spread across 43.2 million borrowers.
On average, American carry $22,600 per person in student loan debt, a 20 percent increase since 2015, according to the Experian analysis.
Not surprisingly, the most populous states are carrying the most debt: California with $132 billion, Texas with $103 billion and Florida with $89 billion.
Cities with large populations also saw the biggest increases in the amount of debt load students are carrying. In 2018, New York City topped the list with $8.9 billion in student loan debt, compared to $4.4 billion a decade earlier. Los Angeles was second, with $5.1 billion, compared to $2.4 billion in 2008, and student loan debt in Chicago grew to $4.8 billion from $2.2 billion over the decade.
The cities with the lowest loan debt were Las Vegas, Nevada, with $755 million; Sacramento, California, with $823 million; and Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas, with $1 billion.
But the percentages by which debt increased wasn’t as predictable.
In some cases, student loan balances have more than tripled in the past decade. In South Carolina, for example, student loan debt grew by 315 percent, growing to $23 billion from $5.5 billion from 2008-2018. In North Carolina, student loan debt increased 252 percent to $41 billion over the period, and in Kentucky, it grew 228 percent to $16 billion.
The rate of increase in outstanding debt balances varies by region, and the past three years have seen some big jumps. Since 2015:
Average balances in the South Atlantic grew 23 percent to $24,259
Average balances in the West grew 21 percent to $23,163
Average balances in the Midwest grew 20 percent to $21,709
Average balances in the South Central grew 18 percent to $21,190
Average balances in the North East grew 16 percent to $22,565
Florida saw the greatest increase in student loan debt over the past three years, with total loans increasing 35 percent to $89 billion. Georgia ranked second, with a 33 percent increase to $57 billion, and Nevada was third, with a 32 percent increase to $9.6 billion.
On the other end of the scale, Arkansas saw the lowest rate of increase in student loan debt over the past three years. There, debt grew by 10 percent to $2.1 billion. Rounding out the bottom three states for increases in student loan debt were Iowa, where debt grew by 13 percent to $12.5 billion, and North Dakota, where debt grew by 14 percent to $2.8 billion.
Americans Largely Paying Back Their Loans
Though student loan debt has reached record levels, borrowers are for the most part making their payments on time. Only about $77 billion in loans — nearly 5.7 percent of them — were delinquent in the third quarter of 2018, and of those, the majority were 90 or more days past due, Experian said.
Since 2015, the number of delinquent loans shrank by 4 percent, and delinquency rates decreased by 50 percent on loans that were 30 to 59 days past due. For loans that were 60 to 90 days past due, delinquency rates shrank by 48 percent.
In fact, Experian said, the only loans that didn’t show dramatic change were those that were 90 days past due, which went down by just 2 percent. Delinquency rates increased in only two areas since 2015— the South Atlantic and the South Central regions, where 9.6 percent and 9.4 percent of accounts were at least 30 days past due, respectively.
Experian said low unemployment rates may be boosting Americans’ ability to make good on their student loan payments.
Payment history is the most important factor in determining credit scores, and missed or late student loan payments can cause them to drop. There are several options available for people struggling to make student loan payments. If the loans were issued by the federal government, there are several options available to adjust the payment or consolidate your debt.
If loans were issued by a private bank, check with the lender for more information.
Photo illustration via Shutterstock
