Delay of Gratification and the Role of Defaults: An Experiment with Kindergarten Children

Matthias Sutter, Levent Yilmaz and Manuela Oberauer ()
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Manuela Oberauer: University of Innsbruck

No 9314, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The ability to delay gratification has been shown to be related to higher education and income and better health status. We study in an experiment with 336 kindergarten children, aged three to six years, whether intertemporal choice behavior is malleable. In a control condition, about 50% of children prefer two rewards the next day over one reward immediately. By setting a simple default this fraction increases to more than 70%, indicating that simple defaults work very successfully in promoting delay of gratification. We also find that patience increases with age and that more patient children have a lower BMI.

Keywords: default; intertemporal choice; delay of gratification; experiment; children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published - published in: Economic Letters, 2015, 137, 21-24

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Journal Article: Delay of gratification and the role of defaults—An experiment with kindergarten children (2015)
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