The Association Between Individual Time Preferences and Health Maintenance Habits

Context. Encouraging healthy behaviors, including dis-ease screening, exercise, and tobacco avoidance, has been a significant focus of clinical attention in recent decades. Little is known about the association between individual preferences with respect to time play and preventive health care use and healthy life-styles. Objective. To determine whether rates of these health behaviors are associated with latent time prefer-ences. Design. Interval regression analysis was used to impute individual level discount rates. The differ-ence in means for the rates of health behaviors were assessed for high vs. low to moderate discounting groups using one-factor probit models. Participants. The 2004 wave of the Health and Retirement Survey included in a time preferences module (1,039 respon