It’s a well-documented phenomenon that black and Latino borrowers struggle disproportionately with student debt, but new research indicates that student loans can be particularly crushing for middle-class borrowers of color.

Student loan delinquency rates tend to be higher in African-American or Latino-dominated neighborhoods, according to a report released this week by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a research organization focused on economic inequality.

These maps show how neighborhoods with high concentrations of African-American and Latino households are more likely to have high levels of student loan delinquency. Center for Equitable Growth/Generation Progress.

But race, income and geography are often linked, so researchers went one step further to determine how big of a role race plays in struggles with student loan debt, independent of income. They found that middle-income neighborhoods with high shares of African-American and Latino borrowers were more likely to have high levels of delinquency than neighborhoods without a large share of households of color. They also found that middle-income neighborhoods with a high concentration of black and Latino households were more likely to have high levels of student loan delinquency than poor or rich neighborhoods with high African-American and Latino concentration.

Middle-class neighborhoods with high concentrations of African-Americans suffer from high levels of student loan delinquency. Center for Equitable Growth/Generation Progress.

Middle-class neighborhoods with high concentrations of African-Americans suffer from high levels of student loan delinquency. Center for Equitable Growth/Generation Progress.

While it may seem counterintuitive that middle-income neighborhoods would struggle more than their poor counterparts with student loan delinquencies, it’s largely because poorer families may be less likely to take on student debt in the first place.

“These are people and families who have gone into debt in order to access labor market opportunities and jobs that wouldn’t be available without higher education,” said Marshall Steinbaum, a research economist at the Center for Equitable Growth. “Those labor market opportunities that are the premise of that economic transaction just aren’t available.”

There are a variety of reasons why that may be the case. For one, African-American students are highly concentrated in less lucrative fields, in part because they’re more likely to end up at less selective institutions that don’t offer high-paying majors, according to a recent study from Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce. Research shows that workers of color also face discrimination in the labor market, so even when they graduate with a degree in a high-paying field it may not take them as far.

Finally historical wealth disparities between white families and their minority counterparts mean that black and Latino student loan borrowers are less likely to have a cushion to fall back on if they can’t get a job that pays them enough to make progress on their loans.