Credit score decline can be an early warning for dementia, study finds
CBSN
Credit scores — used to gauge a person's ability to fulfill their financial commitments — can also be an early warning sign of cognitive decline, according to research from the New York Federal Reserve and Georgetown University.
A person's credit score, on average, starts to weaken in the five years ahead of a dementia diagnosis, while mortgage delinquencies start increasing three years prior, researchers found in an analysis of a nationally representative sample of credit reports and Medicare data on more than 2.4 million people spanning 2000-2017.
While not everyone in the early stage of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD) will fall behind on bills, for those that do, the scale of the change in delinquency is substantial. One year before diagnosis, average credit card balances in delinquency increase by more than 50% and average mortgage balances in delinquency are 11% higher, the researchers found.
