{"id":16799,"date":"2015-03-23T09:18:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T14:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/?p=16799"},"modified":"2016-02-04T12:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T18:34:29","slug":"before-you-light-up-consider-this-cigarette-cravings-signal-poor-credit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/before-you-light-up-consider-this-cigarette-cravings-signal-poor-credit\/","title":{"rendered":"Before you light up, consider this: cigarette cravings signal poor credit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SmokingCredit_j\"<\/a>Two 51ÁÔÆæ economists have figured out a way to guess your credit score: They look at whether or not you need a nicotine fix.<\/p>\n

Niloy Bose and Scott Adams study the fundamental differences between smokers and non-smokers with research published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization <\/em>and featured on the Harvard Business Review\u2019s <\/em>Stats blog. Here are four things they\u2019ve learned:<\/p>\n

Smokers have lower credit scores than non-smokers \u2013 by 35 points, on average<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Evidence suggests smokers and non-smokers differ in willingness to take risk, patience and other personality traits. But Bose and Adams, working with University of Minnesota Professor Aldo Rustichini, found that even accounting for those differences, along with such things as age, gender and occupation, the gap in credit scores remains.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\u201cIf smokers are being treated differently in the work place, and we are seeing that being the case, I think we\u2019re showing that there probably is some underlying reason for that.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\n

\u2013Scott Adams<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something in the non-smokers that we have not understood yet,\u201d Bose said.<\/p>\n

People with low credit scores can have difficulty getting home and other loans or be charged higher interest rates.<\/p>\n

Genetics might matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Adams and Bose can\u2019t account for the difference between smokers and non-smokers, they think genetics might play a role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a genetic component that predisposes somebody to smoke, not be able to quit, and be a sustained smoker that isn\u2019t the case with others, and that also contributes to their poor financial decision making,\u201d Adams said. \u201cOne possibility is how the dopamine receptors in one\u2019s brain, how people respond to heightened serotonin levels, is going to affect a lot of different things. It\u2019s going to affect how they respond to the reward from having a cigarette, and those sorts of things wouldn\u2019t come up in the personality test.\u201d<\/p>\n

Employers notice the difference.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some businesses, including hospitals, have decided to stop hiring smokers altogether, indicating they detect the difference even if researchers can\u2019t yet articulate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf smokers are being treated differently in the work place, and we are seeing that being the case, I think we\u2019re showing that there probably is some underlying reason for that,\u201d Adams said. \u201cThat\u2019s not another characteristic you can point to; it\u2019s something that is being detected by employers. It maybe shows up in some of smokers\u2019 other behaviors along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean your credit score will go down if you light up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credit scores depend on a variety of factors including income, debt, timeliness of repayments, borrowing history and more. The act of smoking itself has no effect on a person\u2019s score, and a person who quits smoking won\u2019t see their credit score rise as a result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like it to,\u201d Bose joked. \u201cWe are not drawing any causal relationship here. \u2026 We don\u2019t have enough data to draw a causal association.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, being a smoker is a good indication that an individual may have a low credit score. In one study, Adams said, \u201cit was arguably the most important data in determining your credit score.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two 51ÁÔÆæ economists have figured out a way to guess your credit score: They look at whether or not you need a nicotine fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[],"section":[132,246],"display_categories":[],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[160],"class_list":["post-16799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-research","section-business","section-business-world-affairs","uwmnews-feed-social-science"],"yoast_head":"\nBefore you light up, consider this: cigarette cravings signal poor credit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two 51ÁÔÆæ economists have figured out a way to guess your credit score: They look at whether or not you need a nicotine fix.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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