How do young low-income university students deal with risk and time preferences in Brazil?

Abstract

This article sought to understand the behavior of young low-income university students through an experiment based on prospect and hyperbolic discounting theory, with risk and time preferences, and their relationships with financial literacy with regard to choice probability distortions. There is a notable lack of studies that simultaneously address risk and time preferences in low-income urban groups, relating experiments based on prospect theory to capture probability distortions in choice processes. This study opens the doors for the question of the relationship between poverty and risk and time preferences to be better discussed in Brazil with the aim of providing evidence that supports national financial literacy plans. The study shows the importance of financial education as a means of reducing agents’ probability distortion. This is crucial, given that probability distortion is one of the pillars of prospect theory. This experiment was based on prospect and hyperbolic discounting theory and used value, weight, and quasi-hyperbolic discounting functions within a maximum likelihood methodology to estimate the risk and time parameters with sociodemographic variables, and with the Financial Literacy Index moderating variable, in a private HEI, with 54 students and 5,940 lotteries. It was observed that low-income urban populations in emerging economies have similar risk and loss aversion parameters to rural populations in developing countries. Low-income students have a greater preference for the present, with it being perceived that a small increase in income is associated with a higher level of patience, making decisions more rational. A better financial education could lead to a smaller probability distortion.