Do Economic Preferences of Children Predict Behavior?

Laura Breitkopf (), Shyamal Chowdhury (), Shambhavi Priyam, Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch () and Matthias Sutter
Additional contact information
Laura Breitkopf: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
Shyamal Chowdhury: University of Sydney
Shambhavi Priyam: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

No 16834, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use novel data on nearly 6,000 children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 that combine incentivized measures of social, time, and risk preferences with rich information on child behavior and family environment to study whether children's economic preferences predict their behavior. Results from standard regression specifications demonstrate the predictive power of children's preferences for their prosociality, educational achievement, risky behaviors, emotional health, and behavioral problems. In a second step, we add information on a family's socio-economic status, family structure, religion, parental preferences and IQ, and parenting style to capture household environment. As a result, the predictive power of preferences for behavior attenuates. We discuss implications of our findings for research on the formation of children's preferences and behavior.

Keywords: social preferences; time preferences; risk preferences; experiments with children; origins of preferences; human capital; behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 74 pages
Date: 2024-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-inv and nep-ltv
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Related works:
Working Paper: Do Economic Preferences of Children Predict Behavior? (2024)
Working Paper: Do economic preferences of children predict behavior? (2024)
Working Paper: Do economic preferences of children predict behavior? (2020)
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