Parental Paternalism and Patience

83 Pages Posted: 12 Jan 2021

See all articles by Lukas Kiessling

Lukas Kiessling

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Shyamal Chowdhury

The University of Sydney

Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Matthias Sutter

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: January 12, 2021

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Parental paternalism, Time preferences, Convex time budgets, Present bias, Intergenerational transmission, Parenting styles, Experiment

JEL Classification: C90, D1, D91, D64, J13, J24, O12

Suggested Citation

Kiessling, Lukas and Chowdhury, Shyamal and Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah and Sutter, Matthias, Parental Paternalism and Patience (January 12, 2021). MPI Collective Goods Discussion Paper, No. 2021/3, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3764579 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3764579

Lukas Kiessling

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ( email )

Kurt Schumacher Str 10
Bonn, 53113
Germany

Shyamal Chowdhury

The University of Sydney ( email )

University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf ( email )

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Matthias Sutter (Contact Author)

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ( email )

Kurt-Schumacher-Str. 10
D-53113 Bonn, 53113
Germany

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