Time Preferences for Life-Saving Programs:  Evidence from Six Less Developed Countries

Abstract

Individuals' time preferences for saving lives are measured in six less developed countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia using a stated-preference method. The results indicate that individuals' discount rates differ significantly by country, but they are much higher than those estimated for samples in the United States and Western Europe. Also, respondents' time preferences for saving lives are characterized by a nonconstant exponential discount function. We conclude that the discounting practices currently used in standard economic analyses of development projects are poor representations of individuals' actual time preferences.

Uncertainty Breeds Decreasing Impatience: The Role of Risk Preferences in Time Discounting

“…In environments where property rights are only weakly protected or institutions of contract enforcement are not reliable, the probability of contract survival will be perceived to be rather low. Therefore, our framework predicts that in countries with weak institutions, such as many developing countries, excessive short-run impatience should be prevalent, which seems to be supported by empirical evidence (Poulos and Whittington, 2000).…”

“…In such an environment decision makers that are prone to probability distortions will exhibit a much higher degree of hyperbolic discounting compared to an environment in which the legal system reliably enforces contracts and protects property rights. This link between the institutional sources of uncertainty and discounting behavior may explain why measured discount rates in developing countries, which are often characterized by highly imperfect contract enforcement institutions, exhibit a dramatically more pronounced hyperbolicity than in Western countries (Poulos and Whittington, 2000;Anderson, Dietz, Gordon, and Klawitter, 2004).…”

Migration Load, Ecological Opportunity, and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder Etiology: Obsessive Character as an Adaptation to Seasonality

“…First, those of African extraction, as compared to those of European extraction, are routinely found wanting on various measures of future orientation, such as delay of gratification (Zytkoskee et al 1971;Price-Williams and Ramirez 1974), future planning (Ruiz and Padilla 1977), and future discounting (Poulos and Whittington 1999;Andrade and Petry 2014). Foreshortened future orientation can be observed behaviorally and statistically from planning a birth to preparing for death.…”

Convention on Biological Diversity

“…The issue is therefore one of knowing how large discount rates are in such contexts. Existing research suggests that local communities often have high discount rates of well over 10% and up to 30 or 40%, reflecting their urgent need to address subsistence and security needs now rather than in the future (Poulos and Whittington 1999). While this conclusion should not be exaggerated -there are many examples of poor communities investing in conservation practices -the available evidence supports the traditional view that many have high discount rates and that these contribute to 'resource mining'.…”