EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Economic preferences across generations and family clusters: A large-scale experiment

Klaus Zimmermann (), Shyamal Chowdhury and Matthias Sutter

No 14998, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Economic preferences are important for lifetime outcomes such as educational achievements, health status, or labor market success. We present a holistic view of how economic preferences are related within families. In an experiment with 544 families (and 1,999 individuals) from rural Bangladesh we find a large degree of intergenerational persistence of economic preferences. Both mothers’ and fathers’ risk, time and social preferences are significantly (and largely to the same degree) positively correlated with their children’s economic preferences, even when controlling for personality traits and socio-economic background data. We discuss possible transmission channels for these relationships within families and find indications that there is more than pure genetics at work. Moving beyond an individual level analysis, we are the first to classify a whole family into one of two clusters, with either relatively patient, risk-tolerant and pro-social members or relatively impatient, risk averse and spiteful members. Socio-economic background variables correlate with the cluster to which a family belongs to.

Keywords: Economic preferences within families; Intergenerational transmission of preferences; Time preferences; Risk preferences; Social preferences; Family clusters; Socio-economic status; Bangladesh; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D1 D64 D81 D90 J13 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ltv and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14998 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Preferences across Generations and Family Clusters: A Large-Scale Experiment (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Economic preferences across generations and family clusters: A large-scale experiment (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Economic preferences across generations and family clusters: A large-scale experiment (2020) Downloads
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:cpr:ceprdp:14998

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14998

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14998