Standard economic models assume that people the future at a constant rate.
Observed behaviour fits a different curve, and the difference has substantial policy consequences.
People the near future steeply and the distant future gently.
A choice made for next year is patient; the same choice made for tomorrow is not.
The pattern produces , in which a person deliberately arranges a commitment they expect to want to break.
are therefore rational rather than a sign of weakness.
A savings account that cannot be accessed until a date, or a course paid in advance, buys the future self a defence against the present one.
Field experiments have found large effects from tiny design choices of this kind.
The findings have been applied with less caution than the evidence supports.
Two are routinely omitted when a result travels from a paper into a policy.
The first is that apparent impatience is frequently a rational response to uncertainty rather than a .
A person whose income is unpredictable is right to prefer money now, because the promised later payment may not arrive.
Treating that as a psychological failure misdescribes a correct about an unreliable environment.
The second qualification concerns itself, which occupies attention and reduces the capacity available for planning.
On that account, poverty produces the behaviour rather than resulting from it, which reverses the direction of every remedy.
The practical difference is stark.
If the problem is a , a well-designed may fix it at negligible cost.
If the problem is uncertainty, nothing short of a more reliable income will change the calculation, and no nudge can substitute for it.