The more intelligent a person is, the less risk averse and more patient they are. The study, "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience
Related to Cognitive Ability?" done by Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huff man and Uwe Sunde found a significant relationship between these variables when they surveyed a thousand German participants drawn from the general population.
Related to Cognitive Ability?" done by Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huff man and Uwe Sunde found a significant relationship between these variables when they surveyed a thousand German participants drawn from the general population.
If this relationship holds across countries and on an aggregate level, it would suggest that countries with low average IQ's have additional barriers to overcome. It might even suggest that countries with lower average IQ's implement policies of forced savings to increase the focus on the long run, though given how corrupt the governments of these countries are any policy that actually gets implemented is likely to be inefficient at the margin.
(No HT for the study, because I forgot where I found this study.)