Education

By 2050 the communities with the highest entrepreneurial ambition will be the majority of this country. Former JBI President Mitria Wilson-Spotser talks with Shannan Herbert, CEO & President of the Washington Area Community Investment Fund, Inc. (WACIF) about what will it take to meet this moment head-on. Find this episode on your podcast platform.

The Viewpoint is the official podcast of the Julian Bond institute for Financial Equity Research at the Center for Responsible Lending. Join us as we discuss economic empowerment, responsible innovation, and a fairer financial landscape, while offering practical takeaways and forward-looking ideas that can shape policy, financial markets, and your everyday financial decisions.

This tool provides an interactive way to explore the data of JBI's 2050 Survey. Click a topic on the left to jump to that section, or a survey question on the right to view its related data. Once you are within a section, click on the 'Home' icon to return to the main menu. The dashboard is optimized for a desktop experience and is not available on a mobile device.

As living costs continue to rise and the federal student loan system is being fundamentally restructured, millions of borrowers are caught between increasing household expenses and a repayment system that is becoming harder to navigate. Understanding the financial condition of the borrower population before these changes take full effect matters because policy changes interact with the financial circumstances of the people they affect. Drawing on data from the Julian Bond Institute’s 2050 Survey, which was administered by NORC at the University of Chicago, this analysis examines how federal student loan borrowers are faring as those changes take effect. The survey is a nationally representative effort designed to examine financial experiences at the intersection of race and generation, and it captures a broader range of financial indicators than most existing data sources. The findings reported here draw on the subset of respondents who currently hold federal student loan debt. The data show that many borrowers are already financially strained. For a population already managing multiple debt obligations, with little savings and limited cash flow, policy changes that increase payment obligations, narrow repayment options, or resume aggressive collections could not be coming at a worse time.