How Well Did PPP Loans Reach Low- and Moderate-Income Communities?

Garrett Borawski and Mark Schweitzer

Economic Commentary, 2021, vol. 2021, issue 13, 5

Abstract: We investigate the degree to which Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans reached small businesses in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. We use PPP loan data from the Small Business Administration that we geocode and link to census tracts. We assess the program’s reach in a few ways and focus on the number of loans, rather than the amount of funds, that went to different areas in order to capture the program’s impact on businesses with fewer than 50 employees—the vast majority of small businesses. We find evidence that the program did have a broad reach within LMI communities, but that it reached higher-income communities to a greater extent and areas with Black, Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaska Native majorities to a lesser extent.

Keywords: COVID-19; Diversity and Inclusion; Paycheck Protection Program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-ec-202113 Full Text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedcec:92108

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.26509/frbc-ec-202113

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Commentary from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by 4D Library ().