(From smartmoney.com) The gap between the haves and have-nots seems to be hitting credit scores. The number of people with credit scores below 599 or above 800 is growing, according to a recent AP report based on FICO data. Given the depth of this recession, credit industry analysts say it’s not surprising that the number of people with scores below 599 has grown from a historical norm of 15% to 25.5%. “There’s still a phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer as a result of the recession,” says Ben Woolsey, a spokesman for CreditCards.com. People who were already struggling financially may have been pushed over the edge by the loss of a job or other hardship, he says.

Paying down debt has likely helped some consumers climb to the top of the credit marketplace, says Ken Paterson, the director of the credit advisory service at the Mercator Advisory Group, a consulting firm serving the banking and payments industries. Consumers’ growing familiarity with how credit scores are calculated and how they can be improved also means that “people who are motivated and don’t have any financial difficulty can do a better job of improving their score,” Paterson says.

The polarization seen in this FICO data may not be surprising, but how will lenders respond? Here’s a look at what growth at the top and bottom ends of the credit spectrum might mean for consumers:

People with Poor Credit

Consumers in that bottom tier of the credit-score landscape will have trouble getting credit at all or will be charged very high interest rates and fees. Credit-card issuers are still struggling to recover from the recession-driven spike in charge-offs and delinquencies, and are also assimilating new regulation into their business models, Paterson says. “Many of the major issuers have moved away from serving the subprime segments and left that to a smaller number of specialist organizations,” he says. Industrywide, the number of credit-card offers sent to U.S. households grew 45% in the first five months of the year compared with 2009, but the percentage of those offers sent to individuals with FICO scores less than 660 has fallen from 20% in the third quarter of 2007 to just 4% in the first quarter of this year, according to data provided by Synovate Mail Monitor.

Read more here: Credit Score Haves and Have-Nots