Do economic preferences of children predict behavior?

Laura Breitkopf, Shyamal Chowdhury, Shambhavi Priyam, Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch and Matthias Sutter ()
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Laura Breitkopf: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Shyamal Chowdhury: University of Sydney
Shambhavi Priyam: World Bank,Washington DC, US
Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (DICE), IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn
Matthias Sutter: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, University of Cologne, Germany, University of Innsbruck, Austria, IZA Bonn, Germany, and CESifo Munich

No 2024_09, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

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)
Date: 2024-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-eur, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-ltv
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