• Media type: E-Book; Report
  • Title: Longevity and patience
  • Contributor: Falk, Armin [Author]; Hermle, Johannes [Author]; Sunde, Uwe [Author]
  • imprint: München und Berlin: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition, 2019
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: Mortality ; O10 ; Poverty Traps ; Time Preferences ; J10 ; D10
  • Origination:
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  • Description: Why does patience vary across individuals and countries? We provide evidence on a widely-hypothesized mechanism, namely that higher longevity fosters patience. Using data on patience for 80,000 individuals in 76 countries, this paper relates exogenous variation in longevity across gender-age-country cells to variation in patience. We find that a ten-year increase in life expectancy implies a 5-percentage point higher discount factor. This relationship emerges for various sub-samples and is unaffected by other determinants including lifetime experiences regarding economic development, institutional quality, or violence. We provide a model to discuss the implications for the emergence of poverty traps.
  • Access State: Open Access