Credit Scores and Inequality across the Life Cycle

Satyajit Chatterjee, Dean Corbae, Kyle Dempsey and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull

NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2026, vol. 40, issue 1, 301 - 375

Abstract: Credit scores are a primary screening device for the allocation of credit, housing, and sometimes even employment. In the data, credit scores grow and fan out with age; at the same time, income and consumption inequality also increase with a cohort’s age. We postulate a simple model with hidden information to explore the joint determination of credit scores, income, and consumption over an individual’s lifetime that can replicate these empirical facts. We use the model to understand the role of technologies such as big data and legal restrictions limiting information on certain adverse events like medical expenses intended to increase credit market access.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/738953 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/738953 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:macann:doi:10.1086/738953

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in NBER Macroeconomics Annual from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().