IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2024_583.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Early Life Conditions, Time Preferences, and Savings

Author

Listed:
  • Effrosyni Adamopoulou
  • Mattia Colombo
  • Eleftheria Triviza

Abstract

This study examines how early-life exposure to food scarcity influences individuals’ long-term time preferences and savings behavior. To this end, we analyze hand-collected historical data on livestock availability during World War II at the provincial level, alongside detailed survey data on elicited time preferences and household savings. By leveraging differences across cohorts and provinces in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that individuals who experienced more severe scarcity during early childhood develop higher levels of patience later in life and tend to hold more (precautionary) savings, conditional on income. Our findings suggest that exposure to protein scarcity during the first years of life and in utero can instigate a lasting increase in prudent behavior in the form of a coping mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Effrosyni Adamopoulou & Mattia Colombo & Eleftheria Triviza, 2024. "Early Life Conditions, Time Preferences, and Savings," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_583, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_583
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp583
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    patience; precautionary savings; scarcity; early life experiences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_583. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.