The image is from a Washington Post article which took the data from an interesting research paper titled Who Pays For Your Rewards? Redistribution in the Credit Card Market.
The research paper is a good read. (A free PDF of the whole paper is available at the link.) It examines how the use of rewards credit cards results in a massive wealth transfer from low-credit-score customers to high-credit-score customers:
We estimate an aggregate annual redistribution of $15 billion from less to more educated, poorer to richer, and high to low minority areas, widening existing disparities.
The Washington Post article attempts to frame the clear north-south split as a result of healthcare issues in This map looks too similar to maps of poverty and education, and we know health correlates strongly with both of those issues.
Could be a choice to reflect the distribution of different scores. I can’t imagine credit scores are a very linear distribution.
It also doesn’t go low and high enough. The first and last category should show everything below and everything above respectively.
I mean a 687 credit score isn’t ideal but it’s far from how bad it can get.
It’s showing averages. Just because certain scores are possible for an individual doesn’t mean there’s a district somewhere with that average score.
My credit score is not shown here because there is no district with that average score.