We thank Will Mautz and Camden Sweed for valuable research assistance, GSU, UNCG, and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis for funding, Darren Lubotsky for providing his code to implement the multiple proxies procedure, and Allen Bellas and conference and seminar participants at UNCG, GSU, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Midwest Economics Association meetings for helpful comments. Ruhm thanks the University of Virginia Bankard Fund for partial financial support. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Trade Commission. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. ABSTRACTWe investigate the predictive power of survey-elicited time preferences using a representative sample of US residents. In regressions controlling for demographics and risk preferences, we show that the discount factor elicited from choice experiments using multiple price lists and real payments predicts various health, energy, and financial outcomes, including overall self-reported health, smoking, drinking, car fuel efficiency, and credit card balance. We allow for time-inconsistent preferences and find that the long-run and present bias discount factors ( and ) are each significantly associated in the expected direction with several of these outcomes. Finally, we explore alternate measures of time preference. Elicited discount factors are correlated with several such measures, including self-reported willpower. A multiple proxies approach using these alternate measures shows that our estimated associations between the time-consistent discount factor and health, energy, and financial outcomes may be conservative.

This article explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives and body mass index (BMI). We provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the distribution's right tail. We also model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals' quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters. Both long-run patience and present-bias predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to both rational intertemporal tradeoffs and time inconsistency.Obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30, has become a leading public health concern in the developed world in recent decades.1 The most dramatic rise has occurred in the US, where the obesity rate skyrocketed from 13% in 1960

We thank Will Mautz and Camden Sweed for valuable research assistance, GSU, UNCG, and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis for funding, Darren Lubotsky for providing his code to implement the multiple proxies procedure, and Allen Bellas and conference and seminar participants at UNCG, GSU, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Midwest Economics Association meetings for helpful comments. Ruhm thanks the University of Virginia Bankard Fund for partial financial support. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Trade Commission. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. ABSTRACTWe investigate the predictive power of survey-elicited time preferences using a representative sample of US residents. In regressions controlling for demographics and risk preferences, we show that the discount factor elicited from choice experiments using multiple price lists and real payments predicts various health, energy, and financial outcomes, including overall self-reported health, smoking, drinking, car fuel efficiency, and credit card balance. We allow for time-inconsistent preferences and find that the long-run and present bias discount factors ( and ) are each significantly associated in the expected direction with several of these outcomes. Finally, we explore alternate measures of time preference. Elicited discount factors are correlated with several such measures, including self-reported willpower. A multiple proxies approach using these alternate measures shows that our estimated associations between the time-consistent discount factor and health, energy, and financial outcomes may be conservative.

This article explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives and body mass index (BMI). We provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the distribution's right tail. We also model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals' quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters. Both long-run patience and present-bias predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to both rational intertemporal tradeoffs and time inconsistency.Obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30, has become a leading public health concern in the developed world in recent decades.1 The most dramatic rise has occurred in the US, where the obesity rate skyrocketed from 13% in 1960

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