Arbeitspapier

Do Economic Preferences of Children Predict Behavior?

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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16834

Classification
Wirtschaft
Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
Subject
social preferences
time preferences
risk preferences
experiments with children
origins of preferences
human capital
behavior

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Breitkopf, Laura
Chowdhury, Shyamal
Priyam, Shambhavi
Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
Sutter, Matthias
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
(where)
Bonn
(when)
2024

Last update
10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Breitkopf, Laura
  • Chowdhury, Shyamal
  • Priyam, Shambhavi
  • Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
  • Sutter, Matthias
  • Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2024

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