Time preferences have been correlated with a range of life outcomes, yet little is known about their early development. We conduct a field experiment to elicit time preferences of over 1,200 children ages 3-12, who make several intertemporal decisions. To shed light on how such primitives form, we explore various channels that might affect time preferences, from background characteristics to the causal impact of an early schooling program that we developed and operated. Our results suggest that time preferences evolve substantially during this period, with younger children displaying more impatience than older children. We also find a strong association with race: black children, relative to white or Hispanic children, are more impatient. Finally, assignment to different schooling opportunities is not significantly associated with child time preferences.
Authors
James Andreoni, Michael A. Kuhn, John A. List, Anya Samek, Kevin Sokal, Charles Sprenger
- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- We thank the Kenneth and Anne Griffin Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant 5R01DK114238 for funding this project. Andreoni also acknowledges the financial support from the National Science Foundation, Grant SES-165895. We thank participants at the AEA meetings and Nadia Chernyak for helpful comments. We thank the directors, principals and staff at the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center and Illinois School District 170 for accommodating the data collection process. We thank Edie Dobrez, Jennie Huang, Phuong Ta, Kristin Troutman, Andre Gray and our staff of assessors for valuable research assistance. This research was conducted with the approval of the University of Chicago and University of Southern California Institutional Review Boards. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w25590
- Published in
- United States of America
