Mapping Credit Card Delinquency Rates in the U.S. by State

visualcapitalist.com

10 pointsgmays2 comments

This surprises me. When a state like Mississippi has lots of poor people you would expect credit card companies to simply not offer the poor credit cards--instead Mississippi has a 39% delinquency rate in contrast to a 13% delinquency rate for Iowa.

> When a state like Mississippi has lots of poor people you would expect credit card companies to simply not offer the poor credit cards

If you can fog a mirror you can always get some kind of credit card. It may be the type that has a usurious APR and requires you to post cash collateral equal to the credit limit, but there is basically no one who can't get a card. It's hard to lose money if the borrower secures the loan with a pile of cash equal to the size of the loan and you also charge interest on the loan (and don't pay interest on the collateral)...

A more interesting statistic might be the amount of past-due debt (normalized per person and/or by median personal income and/or by credit limit), and how much of it is secured. I wonder how much Mississippi's 39% delinquency rate would change if you only looked at unsecured credit card debt.

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