Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen announced Wednesday that the central bank would be adjusting the target range for the federal funds rate—a short-term interest rate at which banks lend money to one another when their reserves fall short—for the third time since the Great Recession, to a range of between 0.75 and 1 percent. The change sent the stock market soaring, but it also impacted a somewhat less visible slice of the economic pie: debt holders, who are predominantly female, black and Hispanic.
Minorities may have lower homeownership rates than their white counterparts, but black and Hispanic households tend to have substantially lower net worths and are, respectively, 105 and 78 percent more likely to end up with high-cost mortgages, according to a February 2016 study. That was true even when researchers controlled for factors like debt-to-income ratio and credit score. READ MORE
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