IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2022-67.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Much Does Racial Bias Affect Mortgage Lending? Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Credit Decisions

Author

Abstract

We assess racial discrimination in mortgage approvals using new data on mortgage applications. Minority applicants tend to have significantly lower credit scores, higher leverage, and are less likely than white applicants to receive algorithmic approval from race-blind government automated underwriting systems (AUS). Observable applicant- risk factors explain most of the racial disparities in lender denials. Further, we exploit the AUS data to show there are risk factors we do not directly observe, and our analysis indicates that these factors explain at least some of the residual 1-2 percentage point denial gaps. Overall, we find that differential treatment has played a limited role in generating denial disparities in recent years.

Suggested Citation

  • Neil Bhutta & Aurel Hizmo & Daniel R. Ringo, 2022. "How Much Does Racial Bias Affect Mortgage Lending? Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Credit Decisions," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-067, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2022-67
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2022.067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2022067pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2022.067?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    2. Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth, 2014. "The cost of racial animus on a black candidate: Evidence using Google search data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 26-40.
    3. Andreas Fuster & Matthew Plosser & Philipp Schnabl & James Vickery, 2019. "The Role of Technology in Mortgage Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1854-1899.
    4. W. Scott Frame & Ruidi Huang & Erik J. Mayer & Adi Sunderam, 2022. "The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders," NBER Working Papers 30125, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Paul S. Willen & David Hao Zhang, 2020. "Do Lenders Still Discriminate? A Robust Approach for Assessing Differences in Menus," Working Papers 20-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    6. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2002. "The Transition To Home Ownership And The Black-White Wealth Gap," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 281-297, May.
    7. Tatiana Homonoff & Rourke O'Brien & Abigail B. Sussman, 2021. "Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(2), pages 236-250, May.
    8. Ross, Stephen L. & Turner, Margery Austin & Godfrey, Erin & Smith, Robin R., 2008. "Mortgage lending in Chicago and Los Angeles: A paired testing study of the pre-application process," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 902-919, May.
    9. Andreas Fuster & Matthew Plosser & James Vickery, 2018. "Does CFPB Oversight Crimp Credit?," Staff Reports 857, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Neil Bhutta & Steven Laufer & Daniel R. Ringo, 2017. "The Decline in Lending to Lower-Income Borrowers by the Biggest Banks," FEDS Notes 2017-09-28-1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Munnell, Alicia H. & Geoffrey M. B. Tootell & Lynn E. Browne & James McEneaney, 1996. "Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 25-53, March.
    12. Domínguez, Patricio & Grau, Nicolás & Vergara, Damián, 2022. "Combining discrimination diagnostics to identify sources of statistical discrimination," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    13. Helen F. Ladd, 1998. "Evidence on Discrimination in Mortgage Lending," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 41-62, Spring.
    14. Neil Bhutta & Aurel Hizmo, 2020. "Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-007, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary & Martin, Hal & Liu, Bo, 2016. "Discrimination in mortgage lending: Evidence from a correspondence experiment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 48-65.
    16. Neil Bhutta & Andrew C. Chang & Lisa J. Dettling & Joanne W. Hsu, 2020. "Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances," FEDS Notes 2020-09-28-2, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Gregor Singer, 2022. "Disparities in Pollution Capitalization Rates: The Role of Direct and Systemic Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 30814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Xudong An & Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Ross Levine & Raluca Roman, 2023. "Social Capital and Mortgages," Working Papers 23-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James Conklin & Kristopher Gerardi & Lauren Lambie-Hanson, 2022. "Can Everyone Tap Into the Housing Piggy Bank? Racial Disparities in Access to Home Equity," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    2. Patrick Bayer & Fernando Ferreira & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "What Drives Racial and Ethnic Differences in High-Cost Mortgages? The Role of High-Risk Lenders," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(1), pages 175-205.
    3. James B. Kau & Lu Fang & Henry J. Munneke, 2019. "An Unintended Consequence of Mortgage Financing Regulation – a Racial Disparity," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 549-588, November.
    4. Bartlett, Robert & Morse, Adair & Stanton, Richard & Wallace, Nancy, 2022. "Consumer-lending discrimination in the FinTech Era," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 30-56.
    5. Laura Blattner & Scott Nelson, 2021. "How Costly is Noise? Data and Disparities in Consumer Credit," Papers 2105.07554, arXiv.org.
    6. Song Han, 2011. "Creditor Learning and Discrimination in Lending," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 1-27, October.
    7. Stephen L. Ross, 2005. "The Continuing Practice and Impact of Discrimination," Working papers 2005-19, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2006.
    8. Chan, Sewin & Haughwout, Andrew & Tracy, Joseph, 2015. "How Mortgage Finance Affects the Urban Landscape," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 987-1045, Elsevier.
    9. Hilber, Christian A.L. & Liu, Yingchun, 2008. "Explaining the black-white homeownership gap: The role of own wealth, parental externalities and locational preferences," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 152-174, June.
    10. Will Dobbie & Andres Liberman & Daniel Paravisini & Vikram Pathania, 2021. "Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending [Loan Prospecting and the Loss of Soft Information]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(6), pages 2799-2832.
    11. Russell Kashian & Robert Drago, 2020. "Race in relation to bank depositors and mortgage applications," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 49(3), September.
    12. Nolan Kopkin, 2018. "The conditional spatial correlations between racial prejudice and racial disparities in the market for home loans," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(16), pages 3596-3614, December.
    13. Paolo Emilio Mistrulli & Md Taslim Uddin & Alberto Zazzaro, 2023. "Discrimination of Immigrants in Mortgage Pricing and Approval: Evidence from Italy," CSEF Working Papers 675, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    14. Marsha J. Courchane & Stephen L. Ross, 2019. "Evidence and Actions on Mortgage Market Disparities: Research, Fair Lending Enforcement, and Consumer Protection," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5), pages 769-794, September.
    15. Hurtado, Agustin & Sakong, Jung, 2022. "The effect of minority bank ownership on minority credit," Working Papers 325, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    16. Kim, Mee Jung & Lee, Kyung Min & Brown, J. David & Earle, John S., 2021. "Black Entrepreneurs, Job Creation, and Financial Constraints," IZA Discussion Papers 14403, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary & Martin, Hal & Liu, Bo, 2016. "Discrimination in mortgage lending: Evidence from a correspondence experiment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 48-65.
    18. Robert Bartlett & Adair Morse & Richard Stanton & Nancy Wallace, 2019. "Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era," NBER Working Papers 25943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Neil Bhutta & Aurel Hizmo, 2020. "Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-007, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Fausto Hernández-Trillo & Ana Laura Martínez-Gutiérrez, 2022. "The Dark Road to Credit Applications: The Small-Business Case of Mexico," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 1-25, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discrimination; Fair lending; Automated underwriting; Credit score; Mortgage lending;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2022-67. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.