American Economic Review· 2013Q1
The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets
- 739citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
Speakers of languages that grammatically link the future with the present save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese compared to speakers of languages that do not.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Languages grammatically linking future and present correlate with future-oriented behavior.
- Speakers of these languages save more and retire with more wealth.
- These speakers also demonstrate healthier behaviors: less smoking, safer sex, and lower obesity.
- Findings are consistent across countries and within similar demographic groups.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. I test the hypothesis that the languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior. This prediction arises naturally when well-documented effects of language structure are merged with models of intertemporal choice. Empirically, I find that speakers of such languages: save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese. This holds both across countries and within countries when comparing demographically similar native households. The evidence does not support the most obvious forms of common causation. I discuss implications for theories of intertemporal choice.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. American Economic Review, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Demography
DemographySocial Sciences