I would love to see some data about this but it wouldn’t surprise me if many USA residents don’t have a credit score at all, or if they do, it is very minimal. Given how many are underbanked, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average credit score is heavily skewed by the people gaming it.

Anecdotally, neither me nor my partner have a credit score. I know several people where I’m living that are permanent renters/get owner financed loans, buy used cars with cash (or are simply given old cars, or don’t have a car at all).

I did a superficial search and found some census data (https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/cps/cp...) but I have no idea how to read it.

Edit: Looks like my suspicions have some merit:

> 22% of Americans do not have a credit score. Half of this percentage has a stale credit score that makes it impossible to generate a valid FICO score while the other half do not have any credit file with any of the three credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

> 18% of Americans have credit scores that fall in the 580-669 range of “fair.” those in the fair range are considered sub-prime and have lower chances of qualifying for a loan or getting better interest rates.

https://comparecamp.com/credit-score-statistics/