This study investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic outcomes. We use a Swedish longitudinal data set that links information from a large survey on children's time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades. Our results indicate a substantial adverse relationship between high discount rates and school performance, health, labour supply and lifetime income. Males and high-ability children gain significantly more from being future oriented. These discrepancies are largest regarding outcomes later in life. We also show that the relationship between time preferences and long-run outcomes operates through early human capital investments.Every day people make decisions that involve balancing costs and benefits occurring at different points in time. Such choices include whether or not to drop out of school, search for a new job or start saving. Intertemporal decision-making has been a cornerstone in many economic models since Samuelson (1937), and a salient feature in human capital theory, where the notion is that people with high discount rates invest less in their future than people who are more future oriented (Mincer, 1958;Becker, 1964). As the full returns to many human capital investments are not revealed until some time later, it is remarkable that there are few empirical studies which link time preferences to long-term outcomes. 1 This lacuna is especially evident regarding investments made early in life. Needless to say, childhood represents a critical period when many important investments are made with potentially life-long consequences. With a small number of exceptions (Mischel et al., 1989;Cadena and Keys, 2011;Moffitt et al., 2011), the existing evidence on the connection between time preferences and real-world outcomes is cross-sectional in nature and focuses on the adult population.This study investigates the relationship between time preferences during childhood and long-run social and economic outcomes. We use a Swedish longitudinal data set that links survey-based information on 11,907 children's time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades. Time preferences are measured through a questionnaire in which children are asked to rate the extent to which they prefer SEK 900 (US$ 138) today over SEK 9,000 (US$ 1,380) in five years. 2 We

Sibling correlations are broader measures of the impact of family and community influences on individual outcomes than intergenerational correlations. Estimates of such correlations in income show that more than half of the family and community influences that siblings share are uncorrelated with parental income. We employ a data set with rich family information to explore what factors in addition to traditional measures of parents’ socio-economic status can explain sibling similarity in long-run income. Measures of family structure and social problems account for very little of sibling similarities beyond that already accounted for by income, education and occupation. However, when we add indicators of parental involvement in schoolwork, parenting practices and maternal attitudes, the explanatory power of our variables increases from about one-quarter (using only traditional measures of parents’ socio-economic status) to nearly two-thirds.

Neighborhoods, Siblings, Family background, J13, R23,

One of the most basic predictions of almost any model of crime is that individual time preferences matter. However, empirical evidence on this fundamental property is essentially nonexistent. To our knowledge, this paper provides the first pieces of evidence on the link between time discounting and crime. We use a unique dataset that combines a survey-based measure of time discount rates (at age 13) with detailed longitudinal register data on criminal behavior spanning over 18 y. Our results show that individuals with short time horizons have a significantly higher risk of criminal involvement later in life. The magnitude of the relationship is substantial and corresponds to roughly one-third of the association between intelligence and crime.time discounting | intertemporal choice | crime O ne of the most basic predictions of almost any model of crime is that individual time preferences matter (see, e.g., ref. 1). The reason is that individuals may differ in the way they balance the rewards of a crime that are savored immediately and its potential costs in terms of apprehension and punishment that are borne in the future. As noted by Wilson and Herrnstein, because "the rewards of crime usually precede the costs of crime [...] time discounting becomes extremely important in explaining criminal behavior" (2). However, empirical evidence on this fundamental property is essentially nonexistent.In this paper, we empirically investigate whether individual time discounting predicts subsequent criminal involvement. Our investigation requires unusually rich data. Ideally, time discount rates should be measured before individuals start getting involved in criminal activity to ease complications due to reverse causation. It is further necessary to link this information to credible indicators of criminal involvement and to follow the individuals for a period that stretches well beyond the peak of the age-crime profile. These restrictions effectively rule out any recently constructed dataset.Our data originate from a Swedish longitudinal dataset that contains information on children's time discount rates collected from a survey held in the year 1966 when the children were 13 y of age. The respondents' answers have been linked to administrative registers, which enables us to follow the 13,606 children who participated in the survey for a period of 18 y. Time discounting is measured through a question in which the children were asked to rate the extent to which they prefer: Swedish Krona (SEK) 900 [US dollar (USD) 140] today over SEK 9,000 (USD 1,400) in 5 y using a five-point scale (in 2013 year's price level). Our measures of crime originate from two sources: (i) interventions by social authorities due to delinquent behavior of children up to age 18; (ii) the universe of criminal convictions for all individuals between ages 15 and 31. Besides details about the type of crime, there is information on crime both at the extensive and intensive margins.For several reasons, the dataset is ideal for our purposes. First, the survey ...