In addition, majority non-white neighborhoods accounted for more applications per capita than did majority-white ZIP codes.

Borrowers in blue states were generally more likely to sign up for the program than borrowers in red states, where many Republican officials have railed against its legality and cost. Congressional districts won by Democrats averaged about 57,000 applications for debt relief while GOP-won districts averaged 50,000 applications.

The new details come as Biden’s debt relief program, which offers up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness, remains stuck in legal limbo. The Supreme Court later this month will hear oral arguments in two cases brought by Republican-led states and a conservative group, which argue that Biden’s debt cancellation is illegal.

POLITICO examined the ZIP codes associated with each of approximately 23.6 million applications for Biden’s debt relief that were received by the Education Department between Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, when the program was frozen in response to a court ruling. The department provided the data in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

POLITICO’s analysis matched application ZIP codes with U.S. Census Bureau estimates of per-capita income, college attendance and racial demographics, as well as the results of the 2022 midterm elections.

Lower-income areas applied at a higher rate

Critics of Biden’s debt relief program, including many Republicans, have decried it as a handout to wealthy Americans who don’t need the help. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C,), who has led the GOP charge against the plan as chair of the House education committee, has blasted the program as a “transfer of wealth from working class Americans to privileged college graduates.”

The White House, meanwhile, claims that about 90 percent of the benefits will go to families earning less than $75,000. When he announced the program, Biden said it was targeted to “working and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic.”

It’s impossible to know the precise income of the tens of millions of borrowers who applied for debt relief because the Education Department didn’t collect that information. On the application, borrowers were required only to self-certify that their annual income fell below the program’s $125,000 limit for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

The per-capita income of the ZIP codes where applicants live is one proxy for estimating their income. Most people, however, earn more or less than the average of their neighborhood.

POLITICO’s analysis found that more than 98 percent of applications came from ZIP codes where the average income is under $75,000. About two-thirds were from neighborhoods with an average income below $40,000.

Applications from higher-income ZIP codes were more rare. Less than 1 percent of the total applications came from the wealthiest ZIP codes where per-capita income is more than $100,000 — roughly corresponding to the portion of Americans who live in these ZIP codes.

Applications from lower-income areas comprised a greater share of the population of adults who attended at least some college compared to applications from higher-income areas.

For example, about 60 percent of those college-educated adults live in neighborhoods where the per-capita income is less than $40,000. But those areas accounted for a greater share, 66 percent, of the applications for student debt.

There were more applications per capita in majority non-white neighborhoods

The NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and other proponents of student debt cancellation have argued it will help narrow the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap.

Overall, about 15 million applications came from majority-white neighborhoods, while about 8.6 million applications were from ZIP codes that are majority non-white, the POLITICO analysis found. But the number of applications per capita was higher among majority non-white ZIP codes than it was in majority white ZIP codes.

In Georgia, for example, about 43 percent of the total population lives in ZIP codes that are majority non-white. But those areas accounted for about 54 percent of the student debt relief applications.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) was one of the most prominent Democrats pushing Biden to cancel student debt and ran on the issue during his close reelection bid last fall — even as Democrats in other close races distanced themselves from the program.

Several Atlanta-area ZIP codes, the state’s Democratic strongholds, had particularly high volumes of applications. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) represents the eastern suburbs of Atlanta in a majority-Black district that had among the highest number of applicants of any congressional district in the country.

“My district is a prime example of why the relief is so important,” he said in an interview, noting that about half of his constituents have a bachelor’s degree but “many others” have debt but no degree. He noted the median household income of the district, which is about $69,000, according to the Census Bureau.

“That’s not wealthy,” Johnson said, pushing back on GOP criticism of the program. “That is doing everything you can to keep your head above water.”

Politically speaking, Johnson said, canceling student debt “was a powerful lever” to drive Democratic turnout across Georgia last fall. “I think it was one of the reasons that people turned out to vote for Raphael Warnock” even as other statewide races, notably the gubernatorial contest, went for Republicans, he said.

“People are looking forward to that relief,” Johnson said. “They know that it came from national Democrats, that it was a Biden initiative.”

The debt relief program is more popular in blue states

The White House launched the application for student debt relief during the 2022 midterm election campaign, and Biden promoted the application in several speeches in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

The applications skewed toward congressional districts won by Democrats, according to POLITICO’s estimates. About 52 percent of applications came from Democrat-won districts; 48 percent were from GOP-won districts.

In the typical Democratic district, the number of applications was a greater share of the population that attended college than it was in the typical Republican district.

Nationally, about 63 percent of federal student loan borrowers estimated to be eligible for relief had applied for the program or were in line to automatically receive relief, according to the POLITICO analysis of Education Department data.

That sign-up rate was higher in many blue states where Democrats heavily promoted the administration’s debt relief application. In Vermont and Massachusetts, for example, about 68 percent of eligible borrowers raised their hand for relief.

Many GOP states, by contrast, had participation rates that were lower than the national rate. That includes Republican-led states where officials are suing to block the plan, such as Arkansas (57 percent) and Missouri (59 percent). Wyoming had the lowest share of eligible borrowers: about 55 percent apply for the program.

Methodology

This is a snapshot of about 23.6 million out of a total of 25 million applications because the Education Department has not yet — or is unable to — match the remaining applications with ZIP codes of borrowers, or has masked applications counts in ZIP codes where fewer than 100 applications were filed. There may be duplicates in this pool of applications if people submitted multiple applications.

The data analysis was based on ZIP code-aggregated data provided by the Education Department. We crossed the ZIP codes with approximately equivalent Census Bureau-defined ZIP code tabulation areas using a crosswalk compiled by the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Demographic data used for this analysis is mostly from the 2021 Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates. In some cases, the surveys did not provide median income estimates for certain ZCTAs.

To align the ZCTAs with congressional districts, we used the Geocorr tool created by the Missouri Census Data Center. Because ZCTAs sometimes overlap congressional districts, the portion of applications assigned to those districts were weighted by the portion of population living in each congressional district in these estimates.

The Education Department has determined these applications were submitted by real federal student loan borrowers. It matched applications received on StudentAid.gov last fall to ZIP codes it has on file for student loan borrowers. It has not yet determined that these borrowers actually qualify for relief (whether they have the correct type of federal student loan, whether they took out the loan before July 2022, etc.). In other words, they are just applications, not approvals. Before the program was shut down, the department had begun issuing approvals and approved approximately 16 million borrowers for relief by Nov. 11.