Parental Paternalism and Patience

Arbeitspapier

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children's intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children's present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure parental interference, we show that more than half of all parents are willing to pay money to override their children's choices. Parental interference predicts more intensive parenting styles and a lower intergenerational transmission of patience. The latter is driven by interfering parents not transmitting their own present bias, but molding their children's preferences towards more time-consistent choices.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ECONtribute Discussion Paper ; No. 055

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
• Subject: Parental paternalism ; Time preferences ; Convex time budgets ; Present bias ; Intergenerational transmission ; Parenting styles ; Experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kiessling, Lukas ; Chowdhury, Shyamal K. ; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah ; Sutter, Matthias
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI)
• (where): Bonn and Cologne
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/228858
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET