By Carla Astudillo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

You’d think that the less money you borrow for student loans, the less likely you are to fall behind in paying it back.

But that's just not the case, especially among minority populations living in low-income areas.

An interactive map from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth shows how there are higher rates of delinquency on student loans among New Jersey's lower income and minority populations, despite borrowing relatively smaller amounts.

On the flipside, wealthier and majority-white areas borrow way more in student loans but have lower rates of delinquency.

Below you can see two maps of New Jersey that compare the average student loan balance, or how much is owed, and the average rate of loans in delinquency in every zip code.

A note about the data: A combination of credit report information from Experian and income data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The delinquency rate for each zip code was calculated by dividing the average number of loans that were 90 days or more past due by the average number of outstanding loans. Read more about the methodology here. Explore the full interactive map here.

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At first, it may seem counterintuitive that graduates that borrow less money have a harder time paying it back.

But it makes sense if you look at how much the borrower ends up making after graduation, said Ben Miller, senior director for Postsecondary Education at the Center for American Progress.

If you owe $10,000 in student loans but make only $30,000 a year, it’s a harder debt to pay off than if you owe $30,000 in student loans but make $100,000 a year.

In addition, people earning higher incomes might have had to take out more in loans for graduate studies, which is why areas where doctors and lawyers live can have such a high average loan balance but low delinquency rate.

“The real issue is not just the level of the debt, but how much do you owe compared to what you earn,” Miller said.

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Essex County: Average Student Loan Balance

In Essex County, you can clearly see how the student debt delinquency dichotomy works. The wealthiest zip codes in Livingston, West Caldwell and Millburn have the highest average student loan balances, or the average amount owed. Meanwhile, zip codes in Newark, Irvington and East Orange have relatively lower average student loan balances.

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Essex County: Student Loan Delinquency Rates

However, when you look at delinquency, the lower income zip codes in Newark, Irvington and East Orange have drastically higher delinquency rates than the wealthier zip codes. Essex County ranks as the 28th highest in income inequality among all counties in the U.S.

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Central Jersey: Average Student Loan Balance

In areas around Princeton where the median income is higher than $100,000, the average student loan balance is way higher than in Trenton.

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Central Jersey: Student Loan Delinquency Rates

Yet, the delinquency rate in Trenton, especially the inner-city zip codes with the lowest incomes, are dramatically higher than in the Princeton area.

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South Jersey: Average Student Loan Balance

The phenomenon is also present in South Jersey. It's most stark around Camden, where the average student loan balance is low in the actual city but significantly higher in the suburbs.

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South Jersey: Student Loan Delinquency Rates

Delinquency rates in the city of Camden, however, are drastically higher than in the suburbs.

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Race

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth map also looked at race and ethnicity and found high delinquency rates in zip codes with higher percentage of African-American and Latino populations.

It shows how student loan delinquency disproportionally affects communities of color, even after controlling for income.

In fact, a Brookings report also found debt among African American college graduates at "crisis level" with black undergraduates with bachelor's degrees defaulting at five times the rate of white undergraduates with bachelor's degrees.

There may be several factors as to why there’s a racial disparity in student loan delinquency, according to Miller.

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Jessica Mazzola | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Students of color are more likely to drop out of college, research shows. That can lead them to earn less than students who did complete college, thus making it less likely they can pay back their loan.

Also, a disproportionate number of students of color attend expensive, for-profit colleges where the quality of education might not justify the amount they're paying for it.

On top of that, students of color usually have less multigenerational family wealth to draw on, and they might be financially supporting other family members. They're also more likely to experience employer discrimination, making it harder to find jobs in the first place.

However, Miller emphasizes that these outcomes shouldn’t be used as rationale to underwrite or deny access to loans for students of color. Instead, he hopes that it will lead to better policies for granting financial aid.

“If we don’t look at this outcomes by race, we risk missing policy crises that we need to address so that we don’t send promising student of color into financial distress,” Miller said.

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Read more N.J. data reporting