A study by researchers at the University of Iowa finds that African American women are generally held in high regard by the nation’s lenders. They study found that lenders view African American women as favorably as they do White men.
The study presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, stated that “African American females are generally perceived as single mothers who are industrious and hardworking.”
Sarah Harkness, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, gave financial professionals fictional loan applications in which education, gender, and race were different but the financial profiles were relatively the same. The results show that the lenders were least likely to loan money to Black men, followed by White women.
