Let’s turn to the dismal science, economics, as Scottish thinker Thomas Carlyle termed it in 1849. Specifically, let’s look at the intersection between economics and language.
It’s notable that the Chinese language does not have marked verb tenses, particularly the future, and, two, that the Chinese at home and abroad have higher rates of saving than Americans and Europeans, who do have future tenses for verbs. In Chinese, future action is indicated by an adverb or qualifier, such as “I go tomorrow” and not “I WILL go tomorrow.” This language structure is called weak future time reference. Is this just a correlation, or is there a causal link?
Back in 2013, Keith Chen of Yale University published an extensive study of savings rates and retirement assets. He looked at the Chinese, the Finns, and the Germans to contrast them with us English speakers and French speakers who associate the present and the future more distantly. The simplified rationalization is that we strong-future speakers view the future as far enough away that we worry less about how we’ll fare then.
In the math, Chen did find the correlation and, then, had a mechanism to explain it, as if it’s causal. In 2023, he collaborated with a strong critic of the science, Sean Roberts and another colleague, James Winters, for a more thorough analysis. The relationship showed up as weaker but still possible. Keep thinking of the future as now and you may find you’re readier for retirement or downturns!
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org
