No Good Deed: Housing, Racial Segregation, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act

Abstract

As we get further away from the years of biological racism and overt structural prejudice, it becomes more crucial to understand the remaining impacts of these discriminatory practices. Across social sciences and the humanities, many scholars have attempted to answer the question of continued residential segregation and structural barriers to success for minority racial groups. This thesis aims to answer the research question, “How does race impact mortgage approval likelihoods?” by investigating the past fifteen years of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Using logistical regressions, I test the relevance of race in approval or denial outcomes to examine the “race-blind” nature of this financial assessment. Across all years of observation, I find that there is a statistically significant relationship between race and approval outcome, a significance that is comparable to income itself. My hypothesis about low approval likelihoods across all years of analysis were partially correct, although the disproven elements still lend themselves to my theory of differential assessment across racial groups.