Research shows that payday lending advertisements target minorities

Payday lenders are more highly concentrated in neighborhoods with high poverty rates

Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago shows that payday lenders in Illinois were more densely populated in zip codes with high poverty rates. The data also shows that payday lenders were more likely to cluster in zip codes where the highest percentage of residents are minorities.

Houston, Texas depends heavily on payday loans

In 2024, people in Houston took out payday loans at a higher rate than the national average. In Texas, the average payday loan interest rate is 664%.

Payday lenders spent more than $5M on lobbying efforts in 2025

Payday lenders largely oppose rate cap policies, increased borrower risk-assessment requirements, and other regulations that would effectively shutter their industry. In 2025, the payday lending industry lobbied against interest rate limits on payday loan apps.

People who take out payday loans often know they are a bad deal

Despite common criticism that payday lenders take advantage of uninformed borrowers, some people who take out payday loans know they are usually a bad deal, but often feel like they don't have any other options. Payday loans are often considered a symptom of poverty. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Google banned ads for loans due within 60 days and interest rates exceeding 36% or higher

In 2016, Google said it would stop allowing payday lenders to advertise on the search engine. According to the company, this decision was made to protect users from deceptive and harmful financial products.

In 2014, there were more payday loan stores than McDonalds

That year, there were more than 20,000 payday lenders in the US, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and 14,267 McDonald's locations. Politicians and consumer advocates frequently cited this statistic as a selling point for increased regulation.

Federal law requires payday lenders to meet certain transparency requirements, but states have their own regulations

Federal law treats payday lending like other lines of credit, meaning it requires lenders to disclose the loan's interest rate and its "finance charge," a dollar amount expressing the full cost of the loan. But states have their own regulations around payday lending, hence why it isn't allowed in every state and why the industry looks so different across the country. These regulations are often part of a state's usury laws.

Banks have increased small loan programs since 2018, upping competition for payday lenders

One of the reasons payday lending flourished for nearly two decades is that most banks charged high overdraft fees and didn't offer small loans. However, since 2018, banks have increased their small loan options. Supporters say this provides safer alternatives for consumers, as banks are subject to more regulatory measures and are less likely to allow consumers to keep rolling over loans.

A study followed a cohort of Black graduates beginning in the 1995–96 school year

While access to higher education led to improved outcomes across minority groups in the US, a significant gap exists in the average amount of debt held and the time it takes to pay back loans. This study found median Black borrowers still owed 95% of the principal two decades later.

Military bases were once targets for payday loans and other predatory lending

The Military Lending Act of 2006—a federal law—capped the interest a lender can charge an active-duty soldier at 36% after the Department of Defense criticized payday lenders for targeting young soldiers with high-interest, short-term loans. However, many towns near military bases still have predatory businesses that critics say take advantage of army families living paycheck to paycheck. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Title loans are a type of short-term loan with high interest rates

Title loans allow borrowers to use their vehicle's title as collateral for a short-term loan. Similar to payday loans, title loans often have high interest rates and are mostly structured to last around 30 days. If title loans aren't repaid, the lender can take possession of the borrower's vehicle.

Are credit unions living up to DEI promises?

Credit union insiders often say their institutions better serve minority bankers through a combination of a not-for-profit ethos and community focus. However, a recent probe found that the largest US credit union rejected more than half of all Black applicants for conventional mortgages. To dive deep into Navy Federal Credit Union’s mortgage practices, read this journalistic investigation.

Find out ways to get lower rates on private loans, such as applying with a cosigner

More borrowers are being pushed to opt for private student loans as changes to federal borrowing caps and repayment plans are implemented. Private lenders typically advertise interest rates that fall anywhere between sub-3% and 15% or higher.

It has historically been tough for minorities to rise through the ranks in investment banking

According to a Barron’s article, only about 1.3% of the $69T asset management business is managed by firms led by women or minorities—even if their performance is comparable to those led by white men.

Nearly half of millennials and Gen Z use BNPL, versus 21% of older generations

While applicants typically need a good credit score and credit history to qualify for many credit cards, that's not the case with buy now, pay later loans, making them more accessible forms of payment for younger generations.

As of 2025, about 16% of US adults are 'smartphone-only' internet users

Demographically, smartphone dependency is greatest among those below 30, Hispanics, Blacks, economically disadvantaged individuals, and those with less formal education. Home broadband adoption is at 78%, with rates highest among suburban residents.

Early pay transparency studies

Pay transparency is a relatively new legal phenomenon, so studies on its impact are limited. However, this article details a few early studies that suggest pay transparency legislation could help decrease the gender pay gap, increase labor participation rates, and reduce employer recruiting costs. Learn more here.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

Advocate estimate roughly 27% of Black service workers live below the poverty line

That’s significantly higher than the rate for restaurant workers overall. Approximately 37% of tipped workers are mothers, nearly half being single moms struggling with income volatility. This article includes more statistics about what the average tipped worker looks like and offers a peek inside their lives.

A larger share of LGBTQ+ individuals use dating apps than their straight counterparts

Roughly a quarter of LGBTQ+ adults reported using a dating app in the past year as of 2022. The trend seems to have persisted as the years have gone on, with apps like Grindr geared toward the community seeing significant revenue growth in recent quarters as of 2025.

Nonwhite Lyme patients tend to be diagnosed later and have more severe disease

Peer-reviewed research published in 2025 from Pfizer—a pharmaceutical company working on a candidate vaccine for Lyme disease—examined Lyme data from more than 150,000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and found that Black patients, as compared to white beneficiaries, were more likely to have disease that had spread further throughout the body at the time of care. The difference, the scientists wrote, may be partly due to difficulties recognizing the characteristic rash on darker-colored skin.

Algorithms built to detect credit card fraud can deny charges if they perceive the attempted purchase is unfamiliar or unusual based on historical data, even when a person has enough credit to make the purchase.

Since fraudulent charges are rare compared with the much greater number of transactions across purchase histories, these models have been shown to be overly sensitive, lacking sufficient training data on what legitimate fraud looks like. Models also perform less reliably for groups in low-income areas or communities of color, given less available data from which to build an accurate baseline.

Billboard's early music charts were racially segregated

In 1942, the publication introduced the Harlem Hit Parade chart, listing the top 10 records sold at select record stores in the majority-Black borough of New York. In 1945, it changed the chart’s name to Most Played Juke Box Race Records, using the music industry term (“race record”) that identified recordings by Black artists, even if they played music markedly similar to the white artists on the other charts.

Among most mainstream sports broadcasts, sports betting ads appear most often in women's basketball and hockey

A random selection of 50 different sports broadcasts tracked one sports betting reference every four minutes. In one of the randomly selected hockey games, the longest stretch of no gambling reference lasted about five minutes towards the end of the game.

The average American likely doesn’t notice how many ads they’re targets of per day

The average American is targeted with roughly 5,000 ads each day—but the conscious mind likely isn’t capable of recalling the majority of those. Even still, many consumers have reported ad fatigue due to the near-constant onslaught of ads.

Car crashes are 34% more frequent on Black Friday compared to other November days

Black Friday anecdotes abound. Once, a mall dropped 500 gift certificates from the ceiling into a crowd of 2,000 Black Friday shoppers, who injured each other fighting for them. Another time, publishers of the game Cards Against Humanity convinced 11,000 shoppers to pay $5 for nothing.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.