Time preferences towards the end of life

Abstract

For various strategic, psychological, and cognitive reasons, social and economic behavior may change as people approach high age and the end of life. Using in-person and online surveys with embedded incentivized experiments, we study how time preferences of the elderly vary with age and subjective life expectancy. We observe decreasing patience of the elderly, and we also find anticipation of such declining patience (appearing like time-inconsistent “future bias”). The ability to bequeath future earnings in the event of an interim death leads to an increase in patience.