Why Do Women Have More Credit Card Debt Than Men?

Of course, this money article at US News & World Report has the typical response to this question:

Even as society closes gender gaps in parenting, marriage and the workplace, we’re still pretty convinced that men and women are innately different in some ways. One 2013 study from Penn Medicine illustrated neurological differences between the sexes. For instance, the study found men tend to be better at performing a single task that’s in front of them, like navigating directions, while women have better multitasking and social cognition skills.

Studies like these back up male-female differences that may have intuited long before now. Still, basic differences in how we interact with the world shouldn’t mean that one gender is worse off when it comes to money. But, unfortunately, that’s what we see.

A 2015 National Debt Relief survey of 1,107 adults with credit card debt revealed some interesting differences between the sexes. In the survey, the main difference between men and women was the amount of credit card debt they carried.

For instance, 63 percent of women ages 18 to 24 carried some credit card debt, but only 36 percent of men in that age category had any debt. Similarly, 66 percent of women ages 55 to 64 carried credit card debt, but only 33 percent of men in that age bracket had credit card debt.

So why the split, and what can women do about these troubling statistics?

Adam Tijerina, consumer advocate for National Debt Relief, says several potential reasons for this gender gap exist. However, he speculates that the most likely culprit is that women are still paid less than men.

The only national relief Adam Tijerina is looking for is relief from being attacked by feminists or others who think that it is discrimination, not the women using the credit cards who are responsible for their own debt. Sure, the article makes a lame stab at admitting that there are other reasons women might be in debt besides their “unequal” pay, but there is little elaboration. Women control most of the money in the U.S., but somehow, they are in credit card debt because of lack of cash? It makes little sense.