Mapping Student Debt | Hacker News Reader

Mapping Student Debt

mappingstudentdebt.org

42 pointsjpmattia11 comments

It just looks like student debt is correlated to population density[0] and inversely correlated to median income [1].

The difference between the delinquency map and average loan balance maps shows that people from places with low median income are taking lower loans but are still struggling to pay it back perhaps due to lack of jobs.

I do have concerns regarding the scale used.

[0] http://utahlandowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MAP-U_S...

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/US_count...

What is very low and very high? I'm not sure my debt/income expectations match theirs so I'm not sure how to interpret this.

Was there data that I skipped over?

Edit: Yes I did miss the data:

> “somewhat high,” for example, then it means that a zip code’s average loan balance is between 25 and 35 percent higher than the national average of $24,271

Yeah, look at that definitely balanced scale. 2 levels labeled "low" and 7 levels labeled "high". Talk about lying with statistics. Smells like a project to be used as a political lever. Shame, since it's a very good idea otherwise.

I don't know. The debt level is relative to the national average, and it ranges from -100% (zero loans) to over 700%. It's not like they fabricated many 'high' levels, the distribution just has a long tail.

I think a diverging color map displaying continuous values would be more appropriate, but I'm hesitant to label it 'lying with statistics'.

It does correspond with the realities of college. Remember, you're hypothetically borrowing against future earning and, for all the griping about college expense, there are a large number of fields where debt is extremely high but future earnings are also.

I'd be interested to see this broken down by major.

Continuing off of what rsfern said, if the actual values aren't a normal distribution it makes sense that the labels would be equally lopsided.

Where's the data on the student's major and whether the university was accredited or a hoax university?

In scrolling around, it looks like debt load corresponds to the locations of colleges. Seems simple that if you want to know where there is student debt, you look for students. The delinquency and income correlation is more interesting.

Just my obligatory point that putting a color weighted percent scale on areas of varying size (counties) when the absolute population numbers in those counties varies independently of county size can cause some misleading impressions.

Rate of delinquency seems like it would it helpful map to include. (As I read it, the "Delinquency" map reflects the average size of delinquent loans in the region, so it has a different denominator than the other maps.)

It's funny how every kind of social pathology gets worse when you cross the Mason-Dixon line

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