1 Time Preferences, Health Behaviors, and Energy Consumption

We conduct a survey eliciting time preferences from a representative sample of US residents, allowing for quasi-hyperbolic discounting. We also ask individuals about health behaviors and outcomes and energy consumption, hypothesizing that present-biased consumers will be less likely to invest in health and in energy-efficiency. Regression results with basic demographic controls suggest that present bias is associated with many outcomes in both of these dimensions, including overall self-assessed health, smoking, drinking, drug use, health insurance, automobile fuel economy, home insulation and weatherization, and use of thermostats. However, the time-consistent component of the quasi-hyperbolic specification is predictive of an even larger number of outcomes. These findings are robust to controlling for risk preferences. In all, our results suggest that both time-consistent and present-biased discounting influence health, health behaviors, and energy use