Your salary has very little to do with your credit score.

Length of history + history of repayment.

Doesn't credit score also incorporate depth of payment (not sure if that's the term, but a history of paying back a large debt)? A financial adviser once told me, when I was three years out of university and had finished paying off my student loans, that my credit score was good (I'd paid off minimal bills ontime on credit cards for years and paid off a used car and student loans) but not deep - I'd never taken on a mortgage or any other high five-digit or six-digit debts.

So, though I'd been responsible for a long time, it didn't count like it would have if I'd engaged in a lot more borrowing. Problem was, I valued being debt-free sooner for the flexibility it gave me.

After all, look at the etymology of mortgage - mort gage (old French), literally "death pledge". Thanks, but I prefer life without that kind of constraint.

And if one is born into generational poverty, in a place highly dependent on government intervention, its probably really hard to access the mindset and opportunities for education and entrepreneurial examples that could start to break the poverty trend.

You are correct that history of repayment helps the score. Someone who borrows $5 once and pays it back once is less trustworthy (from a credit sense) then the person who borrows $5 every month and pays it back every month, as odd as that feels in the abstract.

Credit scores are intentionally a blend of elements. Generally the advice is to make one or two small credit purchases a month and pay them back - just enough to show consistent mild activity. Some people like using gas for this since credit cards are more fraud protected, but that may or may not be a "small purchase" for you.

When we talk about poverty, we want to seperate out the individual case (Bob is broke) from the group case (Mary's tribe is broke.) Fixing Bob's problems looks very different from fixing the tribes problems. (That doesn't mean the root problem is unrelated.)

Financial literacy education is unfortunately overrun with scams.

Of course, but also it is a little ridiculous that someone with $170k+ salary is totally unable to rent at most places due to automatic credit score rejection, despite pretty much everything being below the rule of thumb for rent and salary.

I have a relative who has generally been in and out of debt. Occasionally, she convinces someone in the family to give her a cash infusion - enough to clear the debts.

She goes back into debt right after.

In her youth, she didn't make much. She has since become a skilled professional though and now makes a very good salary.

She is still in debt.

I have friends who make mind boggling amounts of money and also have amazing debt. As they have made more their debt has gotten worse, not better.

A credit score says whether or not you have paid back your debts. Making more money does not fix the broken behavior - it often times makes it worse.

At the same time, being unable to rent an apartment in DC as a Congressperson effectively cuts out people who were, or are of, a certain income strata from ever serving as representatives and Senators. Is that actually desirable?

No. They can commute from Maryland or Virginia like everyone else.

Biden, when he was VP under Obama, commuted back and forth to Delaware on the weekends still.

Those states, and pretty much every state, also have apartments that run credit score checks.

Yes, and you can still get housing with a bad credit score, you will just be getting less expensive housing.