Credit scores, cardiovascular disease risk, and human capital.

Israel, Salomon

Caspi, Avshalom

Belsky, Daniel W

Harrington, HonaLee

Hogan, Sean

Houts, Renate

Ramrakha, Sandhya

Sanders, Seth

Poulton, Richie

Moffitt, Terrie E

United States

2014-11-21T19:11:00Z

2014-12-02

Credit scores are the most widely used instruments to assess whether or not a person is a financial risk. Credit scoring has been so successful that it has expanded beyond lending and into our everyday lives, even to inform how insurers evaluate our health. The pervasive application of credit scoring has outpaced knowledge about why credit scores are such useful indicators of individual behavior. Here we test if the same factors that lead to poor credit scores also lead to poor health. Following the Dunedin (New Zealand) Longitudinal Study cohort of 1,037 study members, we examined the association between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk and the underlying factors that account for this association. We find that credit scores are negatively correlated with cardiovascular disease risk. Variation in household income was not sufficient to account for this association. Rather, individual differences in human capital factors—educational attainment, cognitive ability, and self-control—predicted both credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk and accounted for ∼45% of the correlation between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk. Tracing human capital factors back to their childhood antecedents revealed that the characteristic attitudes, behaviors, and competencies children develop in their first decade of life account for a significant portion (∼22%) of the link between credit scores and cardiovascular disease risk at midlife. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy debates about data privacy, financial literacy, and early childhood interventions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25404329

1409794111

1091-6490

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9270

eng

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

10.1073/pnas.1409794111

cardiovascular disease risk

consumer finance

credit score

human capital

Adolescent

Adult

Cardiovascular Diseases

Child

Child, Preschool

Cognition

Educational Status

Female

Humans

Income

Linear Models

Longitudinal Studies

Male

New Zealand

Risk Assessment

Risk Factors

Self Concept

Young Adult

Credit scores, cardiovascular disease risk, and human capital.

Journal article

Caspi, Avshalom|0000-0003-0082-4600

Belsky, Daniel W|0000-0001-5463-2212

Moffitt, Terrie E|0000-0002-8589-6760

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25404329

17087

17092

48

Center for Child and Family Policy

Center for Population Health & Aging

Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development

Clinical Science Departments

Duke

Duke Institute for Brain Sciences

Duke Population Research Center

Duke Population Research Institute

Economics

Institutes and Centers

Institutes and Provost's Academic Units

Medicine

Medicine, Geriatrics

Psychiatry, Child & Family Mental Health and Developmental Neuroscience

Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Psychology and Neuroscience

Sanford School of Public Policy

Sanford School of Public Policy - Secondary Group

School of Medicine

Social Science Research Institute

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

University Institutes and Centers

Published

111