Do children's time preferences predict future school outcomes?

Binglan Wu, Shuaizhang Feng, Yijing Zhang and Yujie Han

China Economic Review, 2025, vol. 93, issue C

Abstract: This paper uses a large longitudinal dataset to study the predictive power of children's time preferences on their future school outcomes, accounting simultaneously for cognitive (IQ) and noncognitive skills (the Big Five). We show that controlling for children's IQ and the Big Five substantially reduces the association between time preferences and later outcomes. Based on Shapley-Owen decomposition results, time preferences only have negligible predictive power over both cognitive and behavioral outcomes. In contrast, conscientiousness contributes the most in predicting behavioral outcomes, while IQ and conscientiousness are the most significant predictors of cognitive outcomes.

Keywords: Time preferences; Big Five; IQ; Child development; Predictive power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D91 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X25001488
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:93:y:2025:i:c:s1043951x25001488

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102490

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().