The Effect Of Poverty On Intertemporal Choice

Poverty remains one of the most pressing problems facing the world,and how to help the poor to improve or even out of poverty is a worldwide problem.It is found that poverty may have particular psychological consequences that can lead to economic behaviors that make it difficult to escape poverty,especially intertemporal choice.People living in poverty have repeatedly been found to be more likely to discount future payoffs than wealthier individuals.The mechanisms through which poverty affect intertemporal choice,however,are not well understood.And poverty is a multidimensional concept,we can not find which dimensions of poverty affect intertemporal choice from the existing research.The main purpose of this researchwas to test the effect of objective poverty and subjective poverty on intertemporal choice and its psychological reason,meanwhile the intertemporal choice tasks were divided into two types:simple and difficult decision.In Experiment la,we investigated the effect of objective poverty on intertemporal choice.A total of 300 university students were recruited and 57 were chosen to be divided into the poor group and the non-poor group according to the family income indicators,and then they performed intertemporal choice tasks.The results showed that objective poverty could not affect the intertemporal choice preference;In Experiment lb,56 students were chosen from 260 students to study whether the poor perceived their poverty could affect intertemporal choice.Results showed that the poor realizing their own poor state were more likely to choose the smaller and sooner reward in difficult tasks.In Experiment 2,we excluded individual objective economic differences between the non-poor and the poor,manipulated individuals' subjective socioeconomic state.Then they completed the sense of control scale(a = 0.91)and intertemporal decision-making tasks.The result indicated that lower socioeconomic status made people more like immediate gratification in difficult task.Furthermore,it was found that the level of perceived control mediated this effect.Experiment 3 manipulated perceived control by recalling social support to determine whether it was causally related to intertemporal decision.67 university students were recruited and were randomly assigned to "the poor" or "the non-poor"group.Firstly,manipulated individuals' subjective socioeconomic state.Then the participants recalled 3 people who helped them and supported them and write about it.And then they performed intertemporal decision-making tasks.Results showed that there was no difference in intertemporal choice preference between the poor and the non-poor when the poor felt supported.This research explored the differences in intertemporal choice between the poor and the non-poor.Our results revealed that subjective poverty made individuals tend to choose the smaller and sooner reward in difficult tasks,the level of perceived control mediated this effect,and social support could help the poor more far-sighted in intertemporal choice.