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https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496516686620
Social Currents
2017, Vol. 4(3) 199 –207
© The Southern Sociological Society 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2329496516686620
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Empirical/Policy
Racial disparities in wealth have increased
sharply since the start of the Great Recession
(Pfeffer, Danziger, and Schoeni 2013).
Explanations for this increase have focused pri-
marily on blacks’ disproportionate housing
asset losses. Wealth levels are a function of
both household assets and household debt.
Racial disparities in debt burdens, however,
have received relatively less attention in the
sociological literature. In this article, we con-
tribute to the study of racial economic inequal-
ity by examining trends in household debt
accumulation since 2000. We focus specifically
on the recent emergence of a dramatic racial
disparity in one specific type of debt: education
debt. Educational debt accumulation, we argue,
is a racialized process. Historical and contem-
porary patterns of racial inequality in the United
States lead black households to accumulate
larger amounts of student debt relative to white
households, with little gains in terms of educa-
tional attainment for blacks. We propose the
concept of predatory inclusion as a framework
for understanding this disparity.
Predatory Inclusion: Race and
Debt in the United States
Predatory inclusion refers to a process whereby
members of a marginalized group are provided
with access to a good, service, or opportunity
from which they have historically been excluded
686620SCUXXX10.1177/2329496516686620Social CurrentsSeamster and Charron-Chénier
research-article2017
1The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
2Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Corresponding Author:
Raphaël Charron-Chénier, Department of Sociology,
Duke University, Soc/Psych Building, Box 90088,
Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Email: rc153@duke.edu
Predatory Inclusion and
Education Debt: Rethinking
the Racial Wealth Gap
Louise Seamster1 and Raphaël Charron-Chénier2
Abstract
Analyses of the recent surge in racial wealth inequality have tended to focus on changes in
asset holdings. Debt patterns, by contrast, have remained relatively unexplored. Using 2001
to 2013 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we show that after peaking in 2007,
racial inequalities for most debt types returned to prefinancial crisis levels. The exception has
been educational debt—on which we focus in this article. Our analyses show that educational
debt has increased substantially for blacks relative to whites in the past decade. Notably, this
unequal growth is not attributable to differences in educational attainment across racial groups.
Rather, and as we argue, this trend reflects a process of predatory inclusion—a process wherein
lenders and financial actors offer needed services to black households but on exploitative terms
that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits. Predatory inclusion, we propose, is one of the
mechanisms behind the persistence of racial inequality in contemporary markets.
Keywords
race, student debt, household debt, wealth, predatory inclusion
200 Social Currents 4(3)
but under conditions that jeopardize the benefits
of access. Indeed, processes of predatory inclu-
sion are often presented as providing marginal-
ized individuals with opportunities for social
and economic progress. In the long term, how-
ever, predatory inclusion reproduces inequality
and insecurity for some while allowing already-
dominant social actors to derive significant
profits.
Recent developments in the mortgage
lending industry provide a clear example of
predatory inclusion (Squires and Hyra 2010;
Williams, Nesiba, and McConnell 2005;
Wyly et al. 2009). Until the 1950s, blacks
were essentially excluded from mortgage
lending (Cohen 2003; Freund 2007) and have
since continued to experience barriers to
access (Bradford 1979; Wyly and Holloway
1999). In the 1990s, an emerging subprime
lending sector began offering underserved
black and Latino households with new oppor-
tunities for financing homeownership.
Subprime mortgages, however, entailed
much worse lending conditions than those
prevailing in the traditional sector (Faber
2013; Rugh, Albright, and Massey 2015).
These conditions contributed to waves of
home foreclosures, and ultimately jeopar-
dized homeownership’s value as a means of
wealth accumulation for black and Latino
borrowers (Rugh and Massey 2010; Squires
and Hyra 2010).
Predatory inclusion is, in our view, hardly
unique to housing markets. Similar dynamics
have emerged within the context of higher
education in the form of large and racially
patterned increases in student borrowing.
College education—like homeownership—is
an important tool of economic mobility in the
United States (Hout 2012; Torche 2011),
especially in the context of credential infla-
tion (Collins 1979; Cottom 2017). Yet much
like homeownership, obtaining a college edu-
cation can be prohibitively expensive for
those with limited economic resources to
begin with. This has been especially true in
recent years given the nearly 40 percent
increase in tuition costs since 1990 (Kena
et al. 2015). These growing costs have encour-
aged many students to rely on debt as a means
of financing education. Whether student debt
is a productive investment, however, remains
heavily debated.
To understand the potential consequences
of such debt, it is essential in our view to
consider its racial implications. As system-
atic and institutionalized racial inequalities
traverse nearly all social domains (Bonilla-
Silva 1997; Reskin 2012), it should perhaps
come as no surprise that student debt and the
terms of that debt likely entail greater finan-
cial obstacles and hardships for black than
for white borrowers. Because of lower aver-
age income and wealth levels, black borrow-
ers likely have to take on greater absolute and
relative debt levels than their white counter-
parts (Hamilton, Darity, Price, Sridharan &
Tippett 2015; Oliver and Shapiro 2006).
Risk-based pricing by private lenders also
means that blacks are more likely offered
poorer loan terms than whites on average
(Fourcade and Healy 2013; Loonin and
Cohen 2008).
Returns to college education are also lower
for blacks. Compared with whites, black col-
lege students have a lower completion rate
(Huelsman 2015), and, even among college
graduates, have lower earnings (Zhang 2008)
and a higher unemployment rate (Jones and
Schmitt 2014). Because of these disparities,
similar amounts of student debt likely repre-
sent a greater financial risk and yield lower
lifetime benefits for blacks. Student loans, in
other words, may allow an increasing number
of black students to pursue a college education,
but available evidence suggests that this occurs
in a context where differential returns yield
much lower returns than those experienced by
whites.
We tackle these issues below by estimating
overall debt and education debt holding for
black and white households while also briefly
considering whether increased educational
attainment for black households accounts for
the disproportionate increase in black student
debt. We then propose potential alternative
explanations for these patterns—explanations
that we hope will offer important guideposts
for future scholarship on this important and
contemporary issue.
Seamster and Charron-Chénier 201
Debt Trends for Black and
White Households,
2001–2013
Data and Method
Our estimates of household debt are calculated
using data from the Survey of Consumer
Finances (SCF), arguably the most complete
survey of household finances in the United
States. SCF data are collected at the household
level. This provides a significant advantage for
studying student debt holding in the overall
population because it captures older debt hold-
ers (approximately one third of student debt
holders are at least 40 years old; Brown et al.
2012) and debt taken on by students’ kin
(approximately 17 percent of parents take out
loans for their children; Austin 2013). All
household debt measures are taken from the
SCF Summary Extract Public Data and include
all outstanding loans as well as all loans under
deferment. All dollar amounts are reported in
constant 2013 dollars.
SCF data are collected through a dual-sam-
ple design combining a standard multistage
area-probability design and an oversample of
households expected to have higher than aver-
age wealth. To insure national representative-
ness, all descriptive statistics are adjusted
using SCF-provided sampling weights.
Missing data are imputed prior to public
release. We therefore report linearized stan-
dard errors that adjust for multiple imputa-
tions. All estimates were obtained using
multiple imputation and survey data estima-
tion commands in Stata 14 (StataCorp 2015).
Race in our analyses refers to the self-reported
race of the head of household, defined in the
SCF as the male partner in mixed-sex couples
or the older partner in same-sex couples.
Debt Patterns
Figure 1 reports household debt trends between
2001 and 2013. Using 2001 as a reference point,
one sees that household debt increased steadily
prior to the financial crisis for most major debt
types. This increase likely reflects greater credit
availability and was accompanied by a similar
increase in average household assets. After 2007,
however, debt holdings shrank for most debt
types and, in some cases—credit card and vehi-
cle debt—returned to 2001 levels. Fluctuation in
access to debt was especially notable for black
households. For example, average mortgage debt
for black households was almost 200 percent
higher in 2007 relative to 2001 (from about
$29,000 to about $57,000). By 2013, however,
black households’ average mortgage debt had
fallen back to about $34,000—a 40 percent drop
from the 2007 peak. By contrast, average mort-
gage debt for white households only increased by
40 percent between 2001 and 2007 (from about
$60,000 to about $84,000), and has fallen by only
about 10 percent since (reaching approximately
$75,000 in 2013).
The major exception to the debt pattern just
discussed is student debt. In contrast to gener-
ally falling debt levels after 2007, average
household education debt continued to expand
after the financial crisis, reaching more than
2.5 times its 2001 level by 2013. Like mort-
gage debt, patterns of educational debt vary
considerably by race. As Figure 2 shows, edu-
cational debt was similar across racial groups
until 2007 but has intensified more rapidly for
black compared with white households.1 Black
educational debt roughly tripled between 2001
and 2013, growing from $2,422 to $7,531 on
Figure 1. Average debt relative to 2001, all
households.
202 Social Currents 4(3)
average. As a result, black households had sig-
nificantly higher student debt levels than white
households in 2010 (about $2,000 more, p <
.05) and 2013 (about $1,800 more, p < .05).
This disparity is especially striking given that
blacks have lower debt levels than whites for
all other debt types (see Chiteji 2007 for simi-
lar findings in a younger sample).
This overall increase in average black edu-
cational debt over the period reflects an
increase in the number of black debt holders.
As Figure 3 shows, the proportion of black
households taking on educational debt more
than doubled between 2001 and 2013. Almost
one in three black households (32 percent)
held education debt in 2013, compared with
less than one in five (18 percent) white house-
holds. Average education debt for black
households reporting nonzero student debt
($15,000 in 2001, $23,000 in 2013) remains
lower than average debt for white households
with nonzero student debt ($18,500 in 2001,
$31,000 in 2013). Yet student debt represents
a greater share of black households’ debt bur-
den compared with white households. As
Figure 4 shows, educational debt now repre-
sents approximately 20 percent of black
households’ total debt, compared with only 6
percent in 2001.2 By contrast, whites’ educa-
tion debt only increased from 4 to 8 percent of
their total debt burden.
Changes in Educational Attainment
as a Potential Explanation
The most obvious explanation for an increase
in student debt for blacks would be a propor-
tional increase in the number of black students
pursuing postsecondary degrees. Enrollment at
two- and four-year institutions increased at a
Figure 2. Average student debt (in $1,000).
Figure 3. Proportion of households with any
student debt.
Figure 4. Student debt as a percentage of total
household debt.
Seamster and Charron-Chénier 203
faster rate for blacks than for whites between
2000 and 2014 (Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow
2016). Increases in enrollment have been par-
ticularly large for older black students, with
those above 35 years of age now twice as likely
as whites of the same age to be enrolled (Kena
et al. 2015). College enrollment is not mea-
sured in the SCF, but we can offer a prelimi-
nary test by examining the impact of changes
in educational attainment for black and white
households since 2000 on expected racial dis-
parities in student debt.
We do this by estimating a generalized lin-
ear model (GLM) of the following form:
logStudent Debt Black
Year BlackYear
Educ
kk
jk
i
()
=+ +
+×
()
+
ββ
ββ
β
01
aationX
i++β
ε
where Education is a categorical variable
measuring educational attainment of the head
of household (less than high school, high
school, some college, college degree), Year is a
categorical variable indicating SCF survey
year, Xβ is a vector of control variables, and ε
is a normally distributed random error. We
obtain unique yearly estimates of the racial
gaps in student debt by interacting the Black
and the Year variables. The model controls for
household Income, Assets (financial and nonfi-
nancial), Size (the number of people in the
household), and Composition (single with chil-
dren, single without children and head of
household below 55 years of age, single with-
out children and head of household above 55
years of age, married or partnered with chil-
dren, married or partnered without children).
Models are estimated using an iteratively
reweighted least squares (IRLS) method.
Standard errors are adjusted to account for the
SCF’s multiple imputation procedure. Note
that because our model controls for assets, we
do not adjust regression estimates using sam-
pling weights. Using survey weights in this
context could lead to biased coefficient esti-
mates and inefficient standard errors (Winship
and Radbill 1994).
Figure 5 reports predicted racial gaps in stu-
dent debt from our GLM model. Gaps are
computed by holding all control variables con-
stant at their mean. A positive number indi-
cates that blacks had greater student debt than
whites for that year. We present results from
two model specifications. The first model
(“baseline”) provides estimates from a model
that includes all control variables but excludes
the Education variable. The second model
(“full”) adds the Education variable. In effect,
the full model provides estimates of racial gaps
in student debt assuming that educational
attainment for blacks and whites was the same
and constant across the whole period. Shaded
areas show confidence intervals, with the
darker ribbon indicating overlap.
Our findings suggest that educational attain-
ment and household socioeconomic character-
istics do not account for racial gaps in student
debt in any of the years considered. For all
years, estimated racial gaps from the full model
are not significantly different (at the .05 level)
from the estimated racial gaps from the base-
line model. Logistic regression models predict-
ing whether households have any student debt
and GLMs predicting student debt as a propor-
tion of total debt (not shown) yield substan-
tively similar results. Overall, these models
point to two conclusions. First, racial differ-
ences in income, assets, and family structure do
not explain blacks’ greater reliance on student
loans. Second, changes in educational attain-
ment for black and white households between
2000 and 2013 do not explain racial gaps in stu-
dent debt or their increase over time. Although
hardly a definitive evaluation of the role of
Figure 5. Predicted racial gaps in student debt
from GLMs.
Note. GLM = generalized linear model.
204 Social Currents 4(3)
student enrollment, the patterns reported do
offer evidence that increases in debt are likely
not attributable to increased educational cre-
dentials for black households.
Other Potential Explanations
Our estimates reported thus far indicate that
black households are now carrying more stu-
dent debt and that obvious individual-level
explanations—that is, racial disparities in
socioeconomic status or educational attain-
ment—fail to fully explain this trend. We pro-
pose instead that growing racial inequalities in
student debt are perhaps better understood as a
consequence of changing opportunities and
constraints in lending practices. Two specific
industry features in particular warrant much
more attention in our view: the growth of the
for-profit sector in postsecondary education
and the increased role of private lenders in the
educational loan market.
The for-profit sector in higher education is
one potential cause of black households’ grow-
ing student debt levels. Attendance at for-profit
degree-granting institutions increased almost
tenfold between 1995 and 2010 from 240,000
to 2,018,000 enrolled students (Gallup 2015),
while enrollment in nonprofit higher education
institutions remained largely stable. For-profit
colleges and universities impose higher costs
on students than similar public institutions
(Snyder et al. 2016), and importantly, enroll-
ment at for-profit institutions is racially pat-
terned. In 2012, for-profits captured 11 percent
of white undergraduate students, compared
with 21 percent of black undergraduates (esti-
mates obtained from the National Center for
Education Statistics’ [NCES] online data
retrieval tool, Datalab). Older undergraduate
students (aged 24 and above)—who are dis-
proportionately nonwhite—are also overrepre-
sented in for-profit schools (NCES Datalab).
These institutions also tend to disproportion-
ately enroll groups with dedicated federal edu-
cation benefits. In 2009–2010, for example,
for-profit institutions took in approximately a
fifth of all Pell Grants for low-income students
(Goldrick-Rab 2016), which were used by
about 60 percent of black students in 2011
(Ifill and Hufford 2015). For-profits also cap-
tured $1.7 billion in GI benefits in 2012–2013
alone (Health Education Labor and Pensions
Committee 2012).
Attendance at a for-profit institution is asso-
ciated with a greater likelihood of taking on
student debt. In 2012, almost 90 percent of stu-
dents at for-profit private colleges carried debt,
compared with around 65 percent at other four-
year schools (NCES Datalab). A 2012 govern-
ment report found that those graduating from
for-profits finished with median debt of
$32,700, compared with $24,600 for private
nonprofits (Avery and Turner 2012). Almost 40
percent of students at for-profit institutions in
1995 had defaulted on school loans by 2010,
compared with 20 percent of nonprofit attend-
ees (Health Education Labor and Pensions
Committee 2012). Part of the debt problem can
almost certainly be attributed to these differ-
ences in higher education enrollment and the
predatory character of for-profits.
Growth in private student lending over this
period similarly has likely played a role in
greater black indebtedness. Private loans tend
to be more costly and offer few of the protec-
tions associated with federal student loans
(TICAS 2016). Private borrowing nearly tri-
pled between 2003 and 2007 (Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau 2012). Private
borrowing had receded significantly by 2012
(down to 6 percent of all undergraduates) but
remained at levels higher than before the finan-
cial crisis (Looney and Yannelis 2015; TICAS
2016).
Important relative to the points above is the
fact that black students disproportionately
attend educational institutions that provide
insufficient information on federal loan eligi-
bility, leaving them more vulnerable to private
lenders (TICAS 2016). The private sector in
educational lending may in fact be developing
aggressive and risky lending tactics similar to
those seen in mortgage lending at the height of
the subprime bubble. Indeed, this is where we
suspect a significant part of the inequality-gen-
erating action is. For this reason, we hope that
future work will carefully assess the role of
for-profit institutions and private loans as core
drivers of the growing racial inequalities and
Seamster and Charron-Chénier 205
the intensifying indebtedness that black stu-
dents and their families face.
Discussion
Debt can have a positive impact on house-
holds’ long-term financial well-being and is
often understood as a sign of market incorpo-
ration and access to financial tools (Killewald
2013). The long-term benefits of debt and
credit, however, are likely not equal across
groups. Like other scholars who identify
exploitative “fringe” practices in mainstream
financial institutions (Faber 2013) and argue
that market incorporation can actually exacer-
bate group-based economic disparities (Negro,
Visentin, and Swaminathan 2014), we suggest
that predatory inclusion remains an important
cause of contemporary racial inequality.
Growing racial disparities in wealth and eco-
nomic standing, we believe, are not exclu-
sively an effect of past inequality reproduced
through intergenerational transfers. They
reflect contemporary institutional practices—
like predatory inclusion—that need to be care-
fully studied.
We proposed at the outset that growing
racial disparities in student debt reflect a new
and ongoing example of predatory inclusion.
Student borrowing allows otherwise-excluded
households to finance a college education.
Large amounts of student debt, however,
impose significant financial risks on these
households. This is especially true for blacks,
who have more precarious economic positions
overall, lower average returns to college
enrollment, greater enrollment at for-profit
educational institutions, and rely more on pri-
vate student loans. These factors mean that for
black households, growing student debt bur-
dens could likely reduce or even eliminate the
hoped-for financial stability a college degree is
traditionally seen as providing.
The consequences of growing disparities in
student debt for racial inequality are not yet clear
but may be profound. Unlike homeowners, stu-
dents cannot foreclose on their degrees and have
their debt liabilities wiped clean. Moreover,
and unlike the most recent predatory inclusion
episode—spawned by the development of
subprime mortgage lending—student debt levels
are unlikely to recede significantly.3 Student
debt is legally very difficult to discharge, even
when declaring bankruptcy (Austin 2013;
Pottow 2006). Defaulting on student loans also
does not prevent the government from garnish-
ing borrowers’ wages, taxes, and other benefits
(TICAS 2016). Although families carrying stu-
dent debt may be less likely to lose their lifetime
savings overnight—as happened in the foreclo-
sure crisis—households will potentially be per-
manently saddled with debt repayment
obligations that divert income from other uses
and make it hard to obtain loans for other pro-
ductive investments. The financial trends we
describe and the predatory dynamics undergird-
ing them demand greater research attention. If
nothing else, they suggest that in an unequal
society with racially marginalized groups, the
pursuit of opportunity itself can lead to harmful
unanticipated outcomes.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of
interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Notes
1. Trends in black education debt do not reflect
trends for nonwhite households in general.
Education debt levels for Hispanic households,
for example, were below those for white house-
holds through the entire 2001 to 2013 period
and show virtually no growth after 2007.
2. These changes do not simply reflect falling
mortgage debt over the period. Total student
debt for black households as a portion of
nonmortgage debt was 9 percent in 2001 and
increased to 24 percent in 2013.
3. The Obama Administration has recently made
several positive modifications to the fed-
eral loan program, including direct loans and
income-based repayment. Without universal
enrollment in the latter, however, these changes
could potentially exacerbate racial differences
in debt.
206 Social Currents 4(3)
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