The effects of language on children's intertemporal choices

The ability of children to control the desire for immediate gratification is very important to achieve long-term beneficial goals (such as higher education or better health conditions). We show that the language children speak is significantly related to their ability to wait in a simple, incentivized experiment. We are thus providing controlled evidence for a recently developed linguistic-savings hypothesis, stating that languages which grammatically separate the future and the present (like English or Italian) induce less future-oriented behavior than languages in which speakers can refer to the future by using present tense (like German). In our unique experiment, we let practically all primary school children, aged 6 to 11 years, in a bilingual city in Northern Italy make intertemporal choices. We find that German-speaking children are about 46% more likely than Italian-speaking children to wait for a larger reward in the future. Controlling for several factors, including IQ or family background, the difference between German- and Italian-speaking children remains highly significant. Furthermore we provide survey evidence that this effect is unlikely to be driven by difference in cultural attitudes towards patience. Interestingly, language is not related to another important domain of economic decision making, risk taking, which is often associated with intertemporal preferences. Controlling for risk taking, the relation between language and patience persists.