Study by the Woodstock Institute Finds Gender Dispartity in Home Loan Approvals

A study by the Woodstock Institute, a public policy and research group based in Chicago, finds that women continue to face gender bias in mortgages and home refinancing loans. Using fair lending data on 257,000 loan transactions in 2010, the institute found that when women were listed as the primary borrower and a man as the co-borrower on mortgage loans, the loans were 24 percent less likely to be approved than when men were listed as the primary borrower and women were the co-borrower.

On refinancing loans, transactions where women were the primary borrower were 39 percent less likely to be approved. The study examined loans that were similar in loan size and borrowers’ incomes.

The study, “Unequal Opportunity: Disparate Mortgage Origination Patterns for Women in the Chicago Area,” may be downloaded here.