Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences*

Variation in economic preferences is systematically related to both individual and aggregate economic outcomes, yet the origins of the worldwide preference variation have proved elusive. This paper uses globally representative data on risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust to uncover that contemporary preference heterogeneity has its long-run roots in the migration patterns of our very early ancestors: In dyadic regressions, differences in preferences between populations are significantly increasing in the length of time elapsed since the respective groups diverged from common ancestors, as proxied by genetic, linguistic, and predicted migratory distance measures. This result holds across a wide range of cross-country regressions as well as in withincountry analyses that hold people’s current locations constant. While temporal distance drives differences in all preferences, the patterns are strongest for risk aversion and prosocial traits. JEL classification: D01, D03