(Photo: John Hope)
Your ravishing good looks, charming personality, and flair for romantic gestures help you. But what will likely predict your ability to maintain a committed relationship over time is your credit score. That's the conclusion of a paper by the Federal Reserve Board. The paper surveyed 12 million consumers participating in the Equifax credit reporting agency for a 15-year period. The Washington Post reports on the findings:
They found that people with higher (i.e. better) credit scores are more likely to form a committed relationship, as the chart below shows. This was true even after controlling for other differences between partners, like education level, race or income.
The researchers also found that having higher credit scores when they started the relationship meant that couples were less likely to separate over the next few years, as the chart below shows. In fact, for every extra 100 points in the couple's average credit score when beginning the relationship, their odds of splitting in the second year fell by around 30 percent.
-via Robb Allen