Primary Submission Category: Place/Communities
Credit scores, depression, and anxiety in Pennsylvania adults during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Catherine Ettman Elena Badillo Goicoechea Elizabeth Stuart Lorraine Dean
Presenting Author: Catherine Ettman*
Depression and anxiety are driven by both individual- and neighborhood-level risk factors. Consumer credit scores are novel measures of economic status that, when measured at the area-level, represent a neighborhood’s resources, which may have considerable downstream consequences for individual mental health. Using a weighted sample consisting of adults in Pennsylvania (PA) who completed the COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey at some point from September 2020 – June 2022 (N=509,995), we assessed the relationship between area-level credit scores in 1307 PA ZIP codes and individual-level depression and anxiety. We used average area-level VantageScores, defined as nine categories from <675 to ≥850. We then used multilevel models to separately estimate the odds of depression and anxiety, controlling for demographic characteristics, time, and traditional socioeconomic characteristics. We then stratified analyses by demographic characteristics. In fully adjusted models, living in a ZIP code with a higher area-level credit score was associated with lower odds of depression, but not anxiety: living in a ZIP code with an average credit score below 675 was associated with 1.28 times the odds of depression (95% CI 1.50, 3.10) relative to living in a ZIP code with an area-level score above 850. Associations were strongest for White persons, persons with a college or professional degree, persons ages 35-54, and men and women (but not non-binary persons). Findings suggest that while area-level credit scores may provide additional insights about how economic resources play a role in shaping the general population’s mental health, the relationship might be stronger for historically privileged groups, which merits further investigation.