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Responding to claims of widespread racial and geographic discrimination in bank loan practices, Congress passed the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA, pronounced "HUM-DAH") in 1975. This law mandates that regulated financial institutions disclose information about every loan application they receive and its acceptance or denial.
Thirty years later, the practice continues. In 2005, 36,439,157 loan applications were digitally catalogued and made available to the public on three CD-ROMs.
HMDAR explores the scope of this data and its limitations. Users can explore by bank data from loan applications made in 2005 including the race, sex, and income of applicants, and whether their applications were accepted or denied. However, as HMDA does not require banks to offer demographic information about the money they take in as deposits, the data does not permit analysis of the flow of money between social, economic, and geographic strata--who makes deposits versus who receives loans.