Giovanni Burro - Warwick University
Title: Patience decreases with age for the poor but not for the rich: an international comparison
Abstract:
We elicit measures of patience for more than 50,000 individuals from 65 countries in the context of the Gallup End of Year Survey. We find that, within countries, individuals in the richest income quintile discount at the same rate at any age while individuals in the poorest quintile of income discount more, the older they are. The age-patience relationships in the other income quintiles are distributed in an orderly manner between these extremes. We suggest that either lower income leads individuals to be less patient as they age, or that less patient individuals move downwards in the income rank as they age. We find that non religious, optimistic, happy and educated individuals are more patient. Female, unemployed, retired or disabled individuals, and those who have low confidence in vaccine effectiveness, tend to be less patient. We propose a national patience index which is highly correlated with other more sophisticated measures that are harder to elicit. Our index correlates with national characteristics linked to economic development and with cultural features that are widely considered to be associated with patience.
We elicit measures of patience for more than 50,000 individuals from 65 countries in the context of the Gallup End of Year Survey. We find that, within countries, individuals in the richest income quintile discount at the same rate at any age while individuals in the poorest quintile of income discount more, the older they are. The age-patience relationships in the other income quintiles are distributed in an orderly manner between these extremes. We suggest that either lower income leads individuals to be less patient as they age, or that less patient individuals move downwards in the income rank as they age. We find that non religious, optimistic, happy and educated individuals are more patient. Female, unemployed, retired or disabled individuals, and those who have low confidence in vaccine effectiveness, tend to be less patient. We propose a national patience index which is highly correlated with other more sophisticated measures that are harder to elicit. Our index correlates with national characteristics linked to economic development and with cultural features that are widely considered to be associated with patience.
Keywords: Time Discounting, Age, Income, World
