Carey Sipp 2/22/233:31 PM

By Andrew Van Dam, Image: From article, The Washington Post, February 17 2023

Today, we look at a big, fat map of credit scores reproduced from a recent economics paper. And while the map suggests any number of tantalizing questions, we are most intrigued by that big band of credit-score calamity that stretches across the American South.

Almost every corner of America’s most populous region — every race, every income bracket — appears to have low credit scores. But why?

With precious few exceptions, it looks to be a neatly regional phenomenon. We spent hundreds of hours scraping Airbnb listings to determine the true extent of the American South, but we could have saved a lot of time if we’d just drawn a line around the contiguous places with low credit scores.

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Carey Smith Sipp

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