Measuring Intergenerational Time Preference: Are Future Lives Valued Less?

Shane Frederick

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2003, vol. 26, issue 1, 39-53

Abstract: Prior research has estimated intergenerational time preferences by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical life saving programs. From such choices, researchers have concluded that the public heavily discounts the lives of people in future generations. However, using a multiversion survey involving 401 respondents, I show that imputed intergenerational time preferences can be dramatically affected by the specific question that is asked. Different elicitation procedures can yield widely varying results by evoking or suppressing various relevant considerations (such as uncertainty). Many formats revealed no preference for current generations over future generations. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0895-5646/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jrisku:v:26:y:2003:i:1:p:39-53

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11166/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty is currently edited by W. Kip Viscusi

More articles in Journal of Risk and Uncertainty from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().