“Mental Accounting in Childhood”, 1998-06-01 (; backlinks):
The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of mental accounts. Of particular concern was how mental accounts function in the everyday life of children and how children deal with money matters.
Sixty children from 3 age groups (5–6, 8–9, and 11–12) were individually interviewed about their financial situation (eg. sources of money, storage of money, expenditure patterns) and were presented with various financial scenarios. Some of these were children’s versions of scenarios devised for adults by Thaler and by Kahneman and Tversky; others (on windfalls, on money “lumping”, and on buying for self versus buying for others) were devised especially for this study.
No compelling evidence was found for mental accounting in childhood though there was some indication that the 11–12-year-olds responded in a similar fashion to adults whilst the younger children did not.
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