Parent-Bias

How do parents plan to and effectively share resources with their children over time? In a lab-in-the-field experiment in Malawi, we show that, for many parents, plans become more generous the further in the future consumption is. These parents are, however, way more likely to reverse past plans, reallocating away from children’ consumption as it gets closer, even when consumption is still in the future. Reallocating from children’s future consumption towards one’s own – what we call parent-bias – cannot be explained by present-bias; instead, it is consistent with asymmetric geometric discounting, whereby parents discount their children’s future consumption to a lesser extent than their own. Commitment devices designed for presentbias do not mitigate parent-bias. Our findings provide a new explanation for under-investment in children and inform the design of new interventions to address it