New York, NY--Demos views the mortgage servicing deal reached today between a coalition of state Attorneys General and 5 major Wall Street banks as an important stepping stone in the effort to secure justice for homeowners victimized by the foreclosure crisis.

In the past 15 years the ramifications of poor credit have grown, as credit score "mission creep" has set in, said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst with the New York-based think tank Demos and author of the recently released report " Discrediting America." Credit scores determine not just the

Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at watchdog group Demos, says that credit-based insurance scores hurt lower-income people more because they are more likely to have lower scores. She noted a study that showed while those with lower scores made more claims because they couldn't swallow the costs

In its bombshell of a report “Discrediting America,” the nonpartisan public policy research group Demos sums up the problem for black and Latinos: Credit reports largely mirror racial and economic divides, with African Americans and Latinos disproportionately likely to have lower scores. In turn

“If you’re out of work for a long time, you have difficulty paying your bills,” says Amy Traub, coauthor of a June report from the think tank Demos that calls for reform of the credit reporting industry. “If potential employers are looking at credit scores, how on earth are you going to pay your

Insurers justify the use of credit screening for insurance purposes by pointing to internal industry data showing that, on average, people with lower scores are more likely to make an insurance claim. The problem is, they don’t have a convincing explanation for why people with poor credit tend to

Today, six in ten employers say that they check the credit histories of some or all prospective employees before making final hiring decisions. This traps many jobseekers in a devastating catch-22.

New York, NY – Today, as Congressional battles threaten the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the national policy center Demos published a new report that shows how failures of the credit reporting system — and the increasing use of the system's credit reports and scores for non

New York – Today, Demos, a national public policy research and advocacy center that supports fair employment practices, congratulates the Connecticut General Assembly for passing legislation that prohibits employers from using credit reports in employment decisions except in certain circumstances

New York – This week, the growing practice of employers screening the credit scores of job applicants was dealt a legal blow after the Court of Common Council of Hartford, Connecticut, passed an ordinance prohibiting the practice as part of the city's employment application and promotion process