Abstract
We elicit individual measures of patience by applying the new Preference for Earlier versus Later Income (PELI) scale for more than 50,000 individuals from 65 countries who took the Gallup End of Year Survey. This simple to apply measure is highly correlated with alternative measures that are more costly to elicit. We find that, within countries, individuals in the richest income quintile are equally patient at any age while individuals in the poorest quintile are less patient 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 aggregate our individual measures of patience to derive a national patience index that correlates with national characteristics linked to economic development and with cultural features that are widely considered to be associated with patience. We recommend the adoption of the PELI in international surveys.
Highlights
Patience, or the willingness to defer current consumption in exchange for greater future consumption, may be one of the most important ways individuals and societies vary
We identified a previously undiscovered interaction between age and income: poorer people are less patient the older they are, but the richest are patient at any age
Either lower income leads to reduced patience over time, or lower patience leads to reduced income over time
Summary
The willingness to defer current consumption in exchange for greater future consumption, may be one of the most important ways individuals and societies vary. One reason not to expect big differences amongst different wealth levels for the young is the idea, suggested by Fisher, that all young people, independently of their financial situation, are likely to be optimistic and forward looking Both Ramsey (1928) and Becker and Mulligan (1997) suggest the gap in patience between individuals that are relatively richer and individuals that are relatively poorer should increase with age, with patience being greater for older individuals that are well-off. This claim is supported by Epper et al (2020), who measured patience at a single point in time (between 32 and 42 years of age), and checked where individuals with a given level of patience ranked in the wealth and income distributions over their lifespan. Controlling for all these individual characteristics, attitudes, and beliefs is crucial to allow us to cleanly reveal the main associations of interest in our study: the interplay of age, income and patience
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
