The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interest in something that's actually one of the oldest questions in economics, dating back to at least before Adam Smith. And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and institutions can display radically different savings behavior?
全球性的經濟金融危機再次引起大眾的關注 他們關注的,其實就是經濟學最古老的問題之一 這至少要追朔到亞當 · 史密斯 (現代經濟學之父) 之前 這個問題是,為什麼經濟模式 和金融體制類似的國家 其國民儲蓄的行為卻天差地遠?
Now, many brilliant economists have spent their entire lives working on this question, and as a field we've made a tremendous amount of headway and we understand a lot about this. What I'm here to talk with you about today is an intriguing new hypothesis and some surprisingly powerful new findings that I've been working on about the link between the structure of the language you speak and how you find yourself with the propensity to save. Let me tell you a little bit about savings rates, a little bit about language, and then I'll draw that connection.
許多才華洋溢的經濟學家 投入了畢生精力鑽研這個問題 經濟學領域的人士在這方面 已取得極為豐碩的進展 對此問題頗有心得。 今天我在這裡要跟大家說的 是個有趣的新假設 和一些經過我不斷研究後 所得出的強有力的新發現 那就是,人們的語言文法結構 與人們的儲蓄傾向之間的關聯。 讓我來簡要談談關儲蓄率以及語言 然後我會點出兩者間的關聯。
Let's start by thinking about the member countries of the OECD, or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD countries, by and large, you should think about these as the richest, most industrialized countries in the world. And by joining the OECD, they were affirming a common commitment to democracy, open markets and free trade. Despite all of these similarities, we see huge differences in savings behavior.
首先讓我們想想經合組織 (OECD) 的成員國 全名是經濟合作與發展組織。 經合組織的會員國, 基本上,你們可以把他們當作 世上最富有,工業化程度最高的國家。 選擇加入經合組織時, 他們做出了一個共同的承諾 即支持民主、 公開市場和自由貿易。 儘管有這麼多相似之處, 我們仍發現儲蓄行為有極大的差異。
So all the way over on the left of this graph, what you see is many OECD countries saving over a quarter of their GDP every year, and some OECD countries saving over a third of their GDP per year. Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece. And what you can see is that over the last 25 years, Greece has barely managed to save more than 10 percent of their GDP. It should be noted, of course, that the United States and the U.K. are the next in line.
這張圖表由右向左一路上升 你們可以看到,許多經合組織會員國的存款 都超過該國年度 GDP 的 25% 有些經合組織會員國的存款 甚至超過其年度 GDP 的三分之一。 而把右半邊的經合組織會員國往下拉的,就是希臘。 你們可以看到,過去 25 年來, 希臘的存款勉強超過該國 GDP 的一成。 當然,值得注意的是,英國和美國緊接在旁。
Now that we see these huge differences in savings rates, how is it possible that language might have something to do with these differences? Let me tell you a little bit about how languages fundamentally differ. Linguists and cognitive scientists have been exploring this question for many years now. And then I'll draw the connection between these two behaviors.
現在我們看到了這些差異極大的儲蓄率 這些差異怎麼可能是語言造成的呢? 讓我來簡要說說語言之間在根本上的差異。 多年來,語言學家和認知科學家 一直在探討這個問題。 然後我會點出這兩種行為之間的關係。
Many of you have probably already noticed that I'm Chinese. I grew up in the Midwest of the United States. And something I realized quite early on was that the Chinese language forced me to speak about and -- in fact, more fundamentally than that -- ever so slightly forced me to think about family in very different ways.
你們很多人可能已經注意到了,我是中國人。 我在美國的中西部長大。 很早以前我就發現一件事 那就是說中文的時候我不得不提到...... 事實上,不光是提到...... 說中文讓我必須從完全不同的角度 來思考家庭這個概念。
Now, how might that be? Let me give you an example. Suppose I were talking with you and I was introducing you to my uncle. You understood exactly what I just said in English. If we were speaking Mandarin Chinese with each other, though, I wouldn't have that luxury. I wouldn't have been able to convey so little information. What my language would have forced me to do, instead of just telling you, "This is my uncle," is to tell you a tremendous amount of additional information. My language would force me to tell you whether or not this was an uncle on my mother's side or my father's side, whether this was an uncle by marriage or by birth, and if this man was my father's brother, whether he was older than or younger than my father. All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn't let me ignore it. And in fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.
那是甚麼意思呢?我舉個例子給你們聽。 假設我在跟你說話, 然後我介紹我 uncle 給你認識。 我用英文說,你絕對聽得懂。 如果說,我們倆講的是普通話, 事情可就沒那麼好解決了。 我所要傳遞的信息將大大增加。 我的語言將迫使我 不能只是告訴你 "這是我的 uncle" 是要告訴你大量的額外資訊。 我的語言迫使我告訴你 他是我母親那邊的 還是我父親那一邊的 uncle, 這位 uncle 是我血親或是姻親, 如果這個人是我父親的兄弟, 他比我父親年長或是年輕。 所有這些資訊是強迫附帶的。 我說中文時無法忽略。 事實上,如果我想說得準確, 中文讓我必須不斷地思索這些關係。
Now, that fascinated me endlessly as a child, but what fascinates me even more today as an economist is that some of these same differences carry through to how languages speak about time. So for example, if I'm speaking in English, I have to speak grammatically differently if I'm talking about past rain, "It rained yesterday," current rain, "It is raining now," or future rain, "It will rain tomorrow." Notice that English requires a lot more information with respect to the timing of events. Why? Because I have to consider that and I have to modify what I'm saying to say, "It will rain," or "It's going to rain." It's simply not permissible in English to say, "It rain tomorrow."
我小時候對這些著迷得不得了, 但是今天讓我這個經濟學家更著迷的, 是這些同類型的差異 如何影響到語言對時間的描述。 例如,如果我說英語, 我必須用文法說出其中差異 如果我談論的是下過的雨:"It rained yesterday," 正在下的雨:"It is raining now," 或是未來的雨:"It will rain tomorrow."。 請注意,英語需要更多的訊息來描述時間因素。 為什麼?因為我要考慮時間 然後我要修正我想說的 : "It will rain," 或是 "It's going to rain." 英語就是不允許你說 :"It rain tomorrow."
In contrast to that, that's almost exactly what you would say in Chinese. A Chinese speaker can basically say something that sounds very strange to an English speaker's ears. They can say, "Yesterday it rain," "Now it rain," "Tomorrow it rain." In some deep sense, Chinese doesn't divide up the time spectrum in the same way that English forces us to constantly do in order to speak correctly.
相反地,這差不多就是我們說中文的方式 基本上,以中文為母語的人說出來的話 在以英文為母語的人聽來會很奇怪。 他們會說:"Yesterday it rain," "Now it rain" "Tomorrow it rain." 深究此點,我們發現 中國人不會將時間分割開來, 而我們為了說出正確的英文, 卻必須不斷地提醒自己這點。
Is this difference in languages only between very, very distantly related languages, like English and Chinese? Actually, no. So many of you know, in this room, that English is a Germanic language. What you may not have realized is that English is actually an outlier. It is the only Germanic language that requires this. For example, most other Germanic language speakers feel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrow by saying, "Morgen regnet es," quite literally to an English ear, "It rain tomorrow."
語言之間的這種差異 只存在於關係極為疏遠的語系之間, 像是英文和中文嗎? 其實不是。 現場的各位中很多人都知道了, 英語屬於日爾曼語族。 而你們可能不知道, 其實英語是不合群份子。 英語是日爾曼語族中唯一需要時態的。 舉例來說,大多數其他的日爾曼語族使用者 聊到明天的天氣,他們會自然而然地說 "Morgen regnet es," (德語) 翻成英文後,聽在他們耳裡成了:"It rain tomorrow."
This led me, as a behavioral economist, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you speak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured language. And what that means is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present and treat it as if it's something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the future from the present every time you speak. If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more distant and more different from the present, that's going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the present and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them identically, that's going to make it easier to save.
這讓我這個行為經濟學家有了靈感, 提出了一個有趣的假說。 人們談論時間的方式, 人們說母語時必須考慮的時態, 會影響自己長期的行為傾向嗎? 你們說的是英語,有未來式的語言。 這表示,每次你們在討論未來, 或是任何尚未發生的事件, 文法的限制使你們必須區分現在和未來, 並確信這兩者在本質上有所不同。 假設這種本質上的不同 讓你們每次說話時 都能敏銳地分割現在和未來。 如果這點成立,那麼你們心中的未來 會是遙遠的,不同於現在的一個概念, 這種心態會讓人不想存錢。 如果,相對來說, 你們講的是沒有未來式的語言, 對於現在和未來,你們的說法完全相同。 如果這種微妙的傾向, 讓你們對現在與未來一視同仁 這種心態讓人想要存錢。
Now this is a fanciful theory. I'm a professor, I get paid to have fanciful theories. But how would you actually go about testing such a theory? Well, what I did with that was to access the linguistics literature. And interestingly enough, there are pockets of futureless language speakers situated all over the world. This is a pocket of futureless language speakers in Northern Europe. Interestingly enough, when you start to crank the data, these pockets of futureless language speakers all around the world turn out to be, by and large, some of the world's best savers.
這是一個天馬行空的理論。 我是個教授,有人付錢 請我提出天馬行空的理論。 但要這種理論要如何實際測試? 各位,我的做法是查閱語言學文獻。 很有趣的是,語言裡沒有未來式的族群為數不少, 他們遍佈世界各地。 這是一些為主歐洲北部的 沒有未來式的少數族群。 很有趣的是,我開始分析資料時發現, 這些遍佈世界的,不講未來式的少數族群 其實是,廣義來說,世界上最會存錢的人。
Just to give you a hint of that, let's look back at that OECD graph that we were talking about. What you see is that these bars are systematically taller and systematically shifted to the left compared to these bars which are the members of the OECD that speak futured languages. What is the average difference here? Five percentage points of your GDP saved per year. Over 25 years that has huge long-run effects on the wealth of your nation.
就做一個簡單的演示, 我們回頭看看剛才我們 在談論的經合組織儲蓄圖。 你們會發現這幾個國家的數值 平均偏高,多半在圖表的左邊 與那些文法有未來式的經合組織成員相比。 這張圖的平均值差異是多少? 每年拿該國 GDP 的百分之五來做儲蓄。 25 年后,這將對本國金融有長遠而重要的影響。
Now while these findings are suggestive, countries can be different in so many different ways that it's very, very difficult sometimes to account for all of these possible differences. What I'm going to show you, though, is something that I've been engaging in for a year, which is trying to gather all of the largest datasets that we have access to as economists, and I'm going to try and strip away all of those possible differences, hoping to get this relationship to break. And just in summary, no matter how far I push this, I can't get it to break. Let me show you how far you can do that.
雖然這些數據能作此解讀 國與國之間會有各種不同的差異 有時候,要解釋所有這些 可能的差異是極為常困難的事。 然而我等一下要提供的, 是這一年來我埋頭研究的東西 藉由經濟學家身分之便,我收集了那些... 極為龐大的資料集,並試圖將之彙整 然後我試圖剔除所有那些可能的差異, 希望發現這兩種關係之間的盲點。 總而言之,不管我做了多少推論,還是沒有突破。 讓我向你們展示一下 研究可以達到甚麼程度。
One way to imagine that is I gather large datasets from around the world. So for example, there is the Survey of Health, [Aging] and Retirement in Europe. From this dataset you actually learn that retired European families are extremely patient with survey takers. (Laughter) So imagine that you're a retired household in Belgium and someone comes to your front door. "Excuse me, would you mind if I peruse your stock portfolio? Do you happen to know how much your house is worth? Do you mind telling me? Would you happen to have a hallway that's more than 10 meters long? If you do, would you mind if I timed how long it took you to walk down that hallway? Would you mind squeezing as hard as you can, in your dominant hand, this device so I can measure your grip strength? How about blowing into this tube so I can measure your lung capacity?" The survey takes over a day. (Laughter) Combine that with a Demographic and Health Survey collected by USAID in developing countries in Africa, for example, which that survey actually can go so far as to directly measure the HIV status of families living in, for example, rural Nigeria. Combine that with a world value survey, which measures the political opinions and, fortunately for me, the savings behaviors of millions of families in hundreds of countries around the world.
你們可以想像一下, 我收集了世界各地的龐大資料集。 例如說,歐洲的健康和 [老化] 退休人口的調查。 這個資料集會讓你們瞭解,歐洲的退休家庭 真的對調查者都極有耐心。 (笑聲) 想像一下,你是退休的比利時人, 然後你家門口來了個訪客。 "不好意思,請問可以讓我 細讀您的股票投資組合嗎? 您是否知道這間房子的價格呢?可以告訴我嗎? 您府上走廊的長度該不會剛好超過 10 米吧? 如果是的話,可以讓我計算 您通過走廊要花多少時間嗎? 可以請您盡量大力握, 用您的慣用手,握這個設備, 好讓我測量您的握力嗎? 可以吹這根管子讓我測量您的肺容量嗎?" 這項調查費時一天以上。 (笑聲) 結合這些數據與其他調查,例如說...... 美國國際開發署在非洲的 發展中國家蒐集的數據 這個調查連愛滋病毒感染狀況 的數據都可以直接呈現 針對的是......比方說,奈及利亞的農家成員。 把這些數據與世界範圍內的調查相結合, 也就是政治傾向......以及算我好運......儲蓄行為的調查 針對全世界數百個國家的數百萬家庭。
Take all of that data, combine it, and this map is what you get. What you find is nine countries around the world that have significant native populations which speak both futureless and futured languages. And what I'm going to do is form statistical matched pairs between families that are nearly identical on every dimension that I can measure, and then I'm going to explore whether or not the link between language and savings holds even after controlling for all of these levels.
取得所有資料、將之整合,最後得到這張圖。 你們會發現,全世界有九個國家 他們有大量的原住民人口 有的說未來式,有的不說未來式。 而我的做法是,用統計學將其配對, 我盡可能地考慮各個層面, 並撮合所有條件幾乎相同的家庭, 接著我會大膽推測, 語言和儲蓄之間的聯繫是否存在, 連所有這些因素都考量進去的情況下。
What are the characteristics we can control for? Well I'm going to match families on country of birth and residence, the demographics -- what sex, their age -- their income level within their own country, their educational achievement, a lot about their family structure. It turns out there are six different ways to be married in Europe. And most granularly, I break them down by religion where there are 72 categories of religions in the world -- so an extreme level of granularity. There are 1.4 billion different ways that a family can find itself.
我們能控制哪些特質因素? 我要以出生國和居住國為撮合因素, 還有人口統計學 -- 他們的性別,年紀, 他們與本國居民相比的收入水準, 他們的教育成就,家庭結構的細節。 結果發現,歐洲有六種不同的結婚方式。 我用宗教做為劃分依據, 可說是鉅細靡遺, 全世界有七十二種宗教派別, 因此區別程度極為精細。 單個家庭會有十四億種區分標準。
Now effectively everything I'm going to tell you from now on is only comparing these basically nearly identical families. It's getting as close as possible to the thought experiment of finding two families both of whom live in Brussels who are identical on every single one of these dimensions, but one of whom speaks Flemish and one of whom speaks French; or two families that live in a rural district in Nigeria, one of whom speaks Hausa and one of whom speaks Igbo.
現在開始,所有我要告訴你們的, 其實只有比較這些大致相類似的家庭。 我盡可能地讓腦中的想法付諸實驗, 我找到兩個家庭成員,都住在布魯塞爾, 他們每方面的條件都相似, 但是一個家庭說佛蘭芒语,另一個說法語; 又或是奈及利亞郊區的兩個家庭, 其中一個說豪撒語,另一個說伊博語。
Now even after all of this granular level of control, do futureless language speakers seem to save more? Yes, futureless language speakers, even after this level of control, are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year. Does this have cumulative effects? Yes, by the time they retire, futureless language speakers, holding constant their income, are going to retire with 25 percent more in savings.
現在連控制變因都做到如此細緻了, 不說外來式的人存的錢比較多嗎? 沒錯,不說未來式的人, 即便控制變因已如此細緻 他們在任何一年內都有 多三成的可能性進行儲蓄。 這會有累積效應嗎? 沒錯,等到退休時, 這些收入穩定,不說未來式的人, 退休時的儲蓄還會再多四分之一。
Can we push this data even further? Yes, because I just told you, we actually collect a lot of health data as economists. Now how can we think about health behaviors to think about savings? Well, think about smoking, for example. Smoking is in some deep sense negative savings. If savings is current pain in exchange for future pleasure, smoking is just the opposite. It's current pleasure in exchange for future pain. What we should expect then is the opposite effect. And that's exactly what we find. Futureless language speakers are 20 to 24 percent less likely to be smoking at any given point in time compared to identical families, and they're going to be 13 to 17 percent less likely to be obese by the time they retire, and they're going to report being 21 percent more likely to have used a condom in their last sexual encounter. I could go on and on with the list of differences that you can find. It's almost impossible not to find a savings behavior for which this strong effect isn't present.
我們能用這些資料進一步假設嗎? 可以,因為我說了,事實上 我們經濟學家收集了很多健康資訊。 為什麼我們能從健康習慣聯想到儲蓄呢? 舉個例子,你們想想抽菸。 仔細思考後會發現抽菸是負面的儲蓄。 如果說儲蓄是用當下的痛苦換取未來的愉悅, 抽菸則是相反情況。 抽菸是用當下的愉悅換取未來的痛苦。 而到頭來我們期待的會是另外一種結果。 事實上,這就是我們的發現。 與其他條件幾乎相同的家庭比較, 不說未來式的人,任何時間點的 抽菸可能性大約低了 20-24%。 他們退休時的肥胖可能性 大約少了13-17%, 根據報告,在上一次性行為時使用了保險套 的可能性要多21%。 我可以一項項地列舉這些差異。 幾乎很難找到一種儲蓄習慣...... 不受這種強而有力的效應影響。
My linguistics and economics colleagues at Yale and I are just starting to do this work and really explore and understand the ways that these subtle nudges cause us to think more or less about the future every single time we speak. Ultimately, the goal, once we understand how these subtle effects can change our decision making, we want to be able to provide people tools so that they can consciously make themselves better savers and more conscious investors in their own future.
我和我在耶魯的語言學和 經濟學同事們,正開始進行這研究, 我們真的發現了 並理解這種微妙的推力 或多或少讓我們每次 講到未來時都會稍加思考。 最後,我們的目標是, 一旦我們了解這些微妙的推力 如何影響我們的決策, 我們想要提供人們一些方法, 如此一來,他們就能自覺地改善儲蓄習慣, 也能更自覺地投資自己的未來。
Thank you very much.
非常謝謝大家。
(Applause)
(掌聲)