Saturday, September 19, 2009

Patience and Poverty

Whether in politics, economics or religion, poverty is an important issue. Why are some rich and others, who seemed to have similar opportunities, poor? We can probably agree the answer is some combination of genetics and socialization, but what else do we know? According to an experiment done in the 1960's, patience is an incredible predictor of academic and financial success. A group of 4 year olds were given the option to eat a marshmallow right away or, if they waited for a 15 minutes, they could have two. Here's a hilariously entertaining video of the experiment redone. Fifteen years later the research showed that children waited the full 15 minutes had an SAT score 210 points higher than the kid who only waited 30 seconds:



Not only is education effected, but the children who decided not to delay satisfaction had a higher average BMI and more problems with drugs. This explains why some people forgo a present job to invest in education to get a higher paying future one. Or why some people spend their paycheck instead of saving it with interest. Everyone has a different rate at which they discount the future. For children, the future is so far away that the present dominates almost all choices. One of the things that makes us adults is our ability to pass up immediate gratification for future security. Or is it? Are the children who couldn't wait for the second marshmallow worse off or were they just fulfilling their preferences? Surely at some point we would all stop waiting. Could this be applied to the poor who live paycheck to paycheck? If so, is there any solution that doesn't deal with this inherent lack of foresight. And finally, if these differences aren't 100% genetic, shouldn't we teach patience in school?

8 comments:

  1. Don't we teach patience in school?

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  2. I don't. Well, I didn't. I told my students about this research today.

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  3. Doesn't the whole system of grading, rewards/consequences of studying, etc teach delayed gratification?

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  4. Oh I see what you mean. Well I would say they measure patience and if students are paying attention they will act more patient. But I was specifically talking about showing students the cost of discounting the future too much.

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  5. I'm totally going to start teasing my kids with marshmallows. Muh wah ha ha. That video is hilarious.

    I do think every person could practice a little more patience whether there are economic benefits or not, but a thought that came to my mind was this: if you think about the people who could be considered the most patient (like buddhist monks or nuns or the like), they purposely choose to live lives of poverty. They are so patient that the material world no longer holds value, thus making the opposite of this theory true (that patience results in increased poverty).

    And you know, to be fair to many who live in poverty, unforeseeable life circumstances are also contributors to preventing people from obtaining wealth whether they're patient or not. Sure we make our choices, but nobody chooses to get a terminal disease or to lose a job during a recession. Poverty is like quicksand - it's pretty difficult to get yourself out once you've been sucked into it. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?pagewanted=all

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  6. Nice point about the religious. Then again, if you believe in heavenly rewards, perhaps it's just the most patient long term investment you can make: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:20-21&version=NLT

    Unforeseen circumstances can definitely cause poverty, but some of them can be avoided with good planning (health insurance, life insurance, keeping debt small).

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  7. Speaking of poverty and circumstance:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125356566517528879.html?mod=yhoofront

    How weird is that?

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  8. I guess what happens at prom doesn't stay at prom.

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You are the reason why I do not write privately. I would love to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or not.