US Will Have to Write Off Billions in Student Debt Due to Deaths
- Bloomberg asked economists to estimate how many borrowers died
- That number was then multiplied by average amount of debt owed
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The US government will have to write off billions of dollars of student loans from borrowers who died during the pandemic, adding another complication to a system ill-equipped to handle the resumption of payments this fall.
Some 300,000 borrowers are estimated to have died since March 2020 when the pause was initiated, according to Adam Looney, an economist at the University of Utah whose research includes student loan policies.