Assortative mating by IQ and Credit Score

Interesting with disturbing implications. From Credit Scores and Committed Relationships by Jane Dokko, Geng Li, and Jessica Hayes. From the abstract:

This paper presents novel evidence on the role of credit scores in the dynamics of committed relationships. We document substantial positive assortative matching with respect to credit scores, even when controlling for other socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. As a result, individual-level differences in access to credit are largely preserved at the household level. Moreover, we find that the couples’ average level of and the match quality in credit scores, measured at the time of relationship formation, are highly predictive of subsequent separations. This result arises, in part, because initial credit scores and match quality predict subsequent credit usage and financial distress, which in turn are correlated with relationship dissolution. Credit scores and match quality appear predictive of subsequent separations even beyond these credit channels, suggesting that credit scores reveal an individual’s relationship skill and level of commitment. We present ancillary evidence supporting the interpretation of this skill as trustworthiness.

It has been well observed that there is an assortative mating process going on at the university level. People with college degrees tend to marry others with college degrees and people with higher end quality educations tend to marry people with comparable quality educations. Well known and much discussed. One of the underlying issues here is that college admissions, particularly at the most competitive universities are highly with IQ. Basically, university has become the means by which smart people meet other smart people.

Many have expressed concern that we are inadvertently potentially creating a two tier society. The smart educated people marrying among themselves and everyone else. I think the concern is overblown but not ill-founded. Particularly when you read something like Charles Murray's Coming Apart.

Both in that book and the work of Nobel Laureate James Heckman, there is another element beyond IQ, what Heckman refers to as non-cognitive skills and which others describe as social-behavioral skills. Being prompt, diligent, persistent, future-oriented, self-controlled, self-disciplined, trustworthy, hard-working, etc.

Credit scores are a loose proxy for a range of these non-cognitive skills invoking as they do future-orientation, self-control, etc. So the implication, and it is not unreasonable, is that we have assortative mating going on based on IQ (from universities) as well behavioral assortative mating, indirectly predictable through credit scores.

Presumably few people enter into a relationship based on a credit score. However, there is much talk and some research that student loans are beginning to become an obstacle to relationship formation and sustenance. But you don't have to know someone's credit rating to discern their behavioral attributes. Its just interesting to see the connection being documented.