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Reports Driving Runaway Debt: How IDR’s Current Design Buries Borrowers Under Billions of Dollars in Unaffordable Interest

Driving Runaway Debt: How IDR’s Current Design Buries Borrowers Under Billions of Dollars in Unaffordable Interest

This report is part of the SBPC’s Improving & Delivering Relief IDR paper series exploring ways to strengthen the IDR program via affordability, increased enrollment, and increased borrower protections.

This report highlights how the design of the main protection meant to deliver affordability to federal student loan borrowers, Income-Driven Repayment (IDR), ignores the widespread effects that runaway student loan balances have across borrowers’ financial lives.

Drawing on extensive research, the report shows how IDR’s failure to consider the massive costs and consequences student loan borrowers face turns IDR into a debt trap for millions. The report calls on President Biden to take action to fix IDR by ending the phenomenon of runaway student loan balances for borrowers in IDR and making other key changes.


Read the Report: Driving Runaway Debt: How IDR’s Current Design Buries Borrowers under Billions of Dollars in Unaffordable Interest

Read the Blog: IDR Aimed to Make Federal Student Loans Affordable. It Made Them Even More of a Debt Trap.

Read more on the SBPC’s work related to income-driven repayment here.

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