731/2024 Eric A. Hanushek, Lavinia Kinne, Pietro Sancassani, Ludger Woessmann

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people’s time preferences. This paper shows that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data – Facebook interests – to construct novel regional measures of patience within Italy and the United States. The approach is first validated with a cross-country analysis of patience and Facebook interests. We then show that patience is strongly positively associated with student achievement across regions in both countries, accounting for three-quarters of the achievement variation across Italian regions and one-third across U.S. states. The finding is confirmed in an identification strategy employing variation in ancestry countries of the current population of U.S. states. Results hold for six other countries with more limited regional achievement data.

Culture, Behaviour and Development