(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Southerners have the worst credit scores in the US - why? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-22 Residents of southern states have lower credit scores than the rest of the country. Why? It would seem logical to look at demographics or financial success. But that is not the answer. However, while the cause may not spring to mind, it makes sense when you think about it. In summary, as reported by the Washington Post, Southern poor credit it is not due to race. Blacks may be a larger percentage of the population in the South than elsewhere — and African Americans have been the victims of financial abuse. Yet southern Blacks score no worse than their white neighbors — while they do worse than Blacks in other areas of America. Credit score by county — blue is bad Nor is poverty the cause. The South has the highest poverty, lowest income, and lowest education rates. And counties with lower income and college graduation rates tend to have lower credit scores. Yet, economically dynamic regions such as Atlanta show no advantage over rural areas. And the poor in the rest of America do better. Controlling for demographic, educational, and financial factors still left Southerners, of every background, with worse credit scores than people of the same demographic anywhere else in the country. WaPo presented this puzzle to economist Breno Braga at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan D.C. think tank. The Post reported the result: Braga, who studies how credit-ratings data quietly determines so much about our lives, took about 16 seconds to diagnose the problem. “The reason why credit scores are so low in the South has gotta be connected to medical debt because that’s the most common type of unpaid bill that people have,” Braga said. And the South, he said, easily has the highest levels of medical debt in the country. Once again, conservative southern state politicians have hurt their voters. American healthcare coverage — already lagging behind the rest of the developed world — is worst in the South. Americans live shorter lives than people in other industrial nations. Americans in the South die younger than the average American. The divide is stark. Of the ten states with the shortest life expectancies, eight are Southern. Of the other two one is West Virginia — a state philosophically more Southern than Northern. The fact that America has some of the finest research universities and hospitals in the world does nothing to bring affordable healthcare to many Americans. The upshot is not just poor medical outcomes but also poor financial results. And that harsh state of affairs is worst in the South. As Wapo further reports: Of the 100 counties with the highest share of adults struggling to pay their medical debt, 92 are in the South, and the other eight are in neighboring Oklahoma and Missouri, according to credit data from the Urban Institute. (On the other side, 82 of the 100 counties with the least pervasive medical-debt problems are in the Midwest, with 45 in Minnesota alone.) N.B. even in the Midwest, blue states have better results on average than red states. Conservatives have resisted measures that would improve the health of their citizens. The ACA (Obamacare) mandated that states expand Medicaid to cover the near-poor who could not afford even the most subsidized healthcare plans. Conservative states in their haste to repudiate anything to do with Obama, caviled against the requirement. And many found an out. Medical insurance coverage by county — blue is still not good The Supreme Court ruled, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius , that federal law could not require states to expand Medicaid. As of now, twelve states have chosen not to. This decision has left 3.7 million otherwise eligible people without health insurance . All twelve states have Republican governments. Eight of those states are in the South. It is hard to see how that choice is pro-life. Medical bankruptcy is a purely American phenomenon. In no other country do you lose your health coverage when you lose your job (talk about a double whammy). For all their talk of “doing what the American people want”, conservative policies leave the sick suffering both physical and financial pain. Lack of healthcare coverage is not the only reason Southerners die before their time - a crap diet contributes — but it is a significant factor. However, I suspect most Southerners do not know that not only are their state governments enabling illness, but they are also forcing them into credit hell — which makes being poor, or middle class, even more expensive. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154181/-Southerners-have-the-worst-credit-scores-in-the-US-why Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/