Could Your Language Affect Your Ability To Save Money?

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Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Money Paradox.

About Keith Chen's TEDTalk

Behavioral economist Keith Chen says languages that don't have a future tense strongly correlate with higher savings.

About Keith Chen

Why is it that we allow subtle nudges of our language to affect our decision making?

Keith Chen is an associate professor of economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His most recent research explores how people's economic choices are influenced by the language they speak. Some languages refer to the future using verb helpers like "will" and "shall," while others don't have specific verbs to refer to future actions. Chen correlated these two different language types with remarkably different rates of saving for the future. The paper was published in the American Economic Review.