AI Insight
This study examined how age and income interact to influence people's preferences for delayed versus immediate rewards and certain versus risky rewards in 1,188 adults aged 20-80. The research found that for adults 35 and older, patience for delayed rewards increased with age, while tolerance for risky choices peaked around age 60, but both patterns were significantly moderated by income level. Higher-income individuals showed different age-related patterns than lower- and middle-income groups, with income buffering against some age-related changes in decision-making preferences.
Why it matters
These findings help explain previous contradictory research on aging and decision-making by revealing that socioeconomic status substantially shapes how economic preferences change across the lifespan. The results suggest that financial interventions and retirement planning strategies should be tailored differently based on both age and income level rather than age alone.
Recent meta-analyses of age-related changes in decision-making have yielded inconsistent findings, reporting no sizable age effect on intertemporal and risky choice (i.e., delay and probability discounting, respectively). However, these reviews did not systematically account for socioeconomic status, a potential moderator. The present research addresses this gap by examining the interactive effects of age and self-reported annual household income on both intertemporal and risky choice across a wide range of reward amounts. In two parallel studies, participants aged 20 to 80 (Study 1, delay discounting: N = 596; Study 2, probability discounting: N = 592) completed an adjusting-amount discounting task with hypothetical rewards of $150, $2,500, and $30,000. As expected, income was unrelated to discounting in participants under 35. For those 35 and older, the effects of age were domain-specific: Degree of delay discounting decreased with age, as indicated by linear increases in the Area-under-the-Curve (AuC), whereas for risky choice, the relation between AuC and age was nonlinear, with discounting decreasing until around age 60 and relatively little change thereafter. As predicted by the buffering hypothesis, these age effects were moderated by income in both domains. For delay discounting, the age-related decrease in degree of discounting was present only in lower- and middle-income groups. For probability discounting, the nonlinear age trajectory was absent in the high-income group. These findings resolve prior inconsistencies by demonstrating that the effects of aging on economic preferences follow distinct, domain-specific trajectories that are markedly influenced by socioeconomic context.
Source: Age, income, and the discounting of delayed and probabilistic rewards