Does Your Gender Affect Your Credit Score?

In the contest for the gender with the best credit, men win—but only by a hair.

The average credit score in the U.S. for men is 630 out of a possible 850, compared with 621 for women. What's more intriguing: Men maintain that credit edge even though their average overall debt and average credit card balance exceed the averages for women.

Men's higher wages may help explain the difference in results, which come from a study of users of the website Credit Sesame. While income isn't a factor in credit scores, 23 percent of men in the study, which sampled more than 2.5 million of the site's 7 million members, said they earned at least $75,000 a year, while only 18 percent of women reported earning that much. Greater financial flexibility makes managing credit easier, apparently.

Here are other ways the credit picture differs for men and women: