Is an Individual’s Life Pace Adapted to Their Perceptions of the Future?

The passage and pace of time shape human lives. Individuals’ behavior is adapted to their temporal horizons and their temporal horizons are adjusted to their expectations about the time they have left to live. Extrinsic mortality rates are believed to influence whether individuals adopt a slower life pace by postponing maturity to acquire knowledge or a faster life pace, characterized by an early transition to parenthood. Exposure to deadly shocks leads to a perceived shortening of life expectancy and shifts in individuals' temporal preferences, resulting in a present-focused mindset, higher impatience and increasing sense of urgency. This paper explores how the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, a large-scale, random mortality shock, altered individuals’ perceptions of their futures and accelerated the pace of their transition into adulthood. Specifically, it tests whether the tsunami had an impact in marriage timing, and reduced the age of initiation of parenthood as well as the intervals between births.

Although fertility rates have been observed to rise following natural disasters, the underlying mechanisms remain only partially understood. Using data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a representative longitudinal survey of 28.372 Indonesian individuals living in areas vulnerable to the 2004 tsunami inundation, this study introduces and tests a new explanatory mechanism: the Acceleration Model. This model explores how a post-disaster shortened temporal outlook and heightened sense of urgency influence variation in life pace, reflected in both psychological outcomes -higher impatience- and behavioral changes – earlier marriages, earlier onset of parenthood and reduced timing between births-. By examining the interplay between perceived life expectancy, temporal horizons and fertility timing, this paper contributes to the understanding of how perceptions of the future influence present behavior.