The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing.

In Creditworthy, the first comprehensive history of this crucial American institution, Josh Lauer explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. Ultimately, Lauer argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports—and, later, credit ratings and credit scores—credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic "facts." It is fundamentally concerned with—and determines—our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.

"[A] fascinating study of the credit-rating industry’s central role in creating the 'modern surveillance society.' . . . Lauer’s top-down economic history is a thorough, enlightening, and long-overdue contribution to the field." - Publishers Weekly

"Crisply written, deeply researched, and forcefully argued, [Creditworthy] offers a reckoning with the informational infrastructure of modern capitalism, now a century and a half old. . . . In illuminating how the credit industry devised rules, formulas, and laws to tame this problem and also to profit from it, he has crafted a penetrating prehistory of our present dilemmas about data surveillance." - The American Historical Review

"This compelling book offers food for thought for all its readers, but especially for those surveillance scholars who argue that state surveillance has led commercial surveillance in the social monitoring of Americans." - Surveillance & Society

"Deeply researched and boldly argued, Creditworthy is an empirical account of an important economic institution and the technologies, government policies, industry leaders, and professional bodies behind its rise. . . . Creditworthy makes a significant contribution to the history of capitalism, and is well placed within the new Columbia University Press series on this subject." - The Economic History Review

"Through his thorough analysis of the history of this industry, the seemingly harmless gathering of detailed consumer financial information throughout the years has led us to a point where our privacy is compromised and our financial identity has been reduced to algorithms and ratings. This book is appropriate for anyone interested in financial privacy, consumer profiling, the history of credit reporting and issues around financial identity." - Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy

"[A] riveting history of the credit reporting industry." - Public Books

"Credit is an exchange made on a promise to pay at some future point. The provision of credit depends, therefore, on an assessment of whether or not to trust that promise. It’s a risky business. Josh Lauer traces the history of credit scoring – a means of quantifying this risk – back to the 1840s." - London Review of Books

"Creditworthy is an accessible history of consumer credit reporting." - Journal of American History

"The book is a tour de force: it spans close to two centuries of detailed history...this engaging and richly documented book will no doubt be of great interest to scholars and students of consumer credit, credit surveillance, and financial identity in the United States." - Contemporary Sociology

"Creditworthy is a fine piece of scholarship that enhances our understanding of a pervasive and essential institution of modern capitalism. It is also a genuinely good read. Josh Lauer deserves a great deal of (you guessed it!) credit for his outstanding work." - Enterprise & Society

"With Creditworthy, Josh Lauer has written a landmark book which will surely prove a must-read for historians, sociologists and economists interested in the history of credit in the United States." - European Journal of Sociology

"Lauer’s Creditworthy peels back the curtain on the business of rating consumers for obtaining credit—how to judge if a person was worthy of credit and, if worthy, for how much." - Reviews in American History