TED演講 你存錢的能力跟你用的語言有關？

講師：Keith Chen

授課語言：英文

類型：心理 經濟 TED

課程簡介：經濟學家能從語言學家那里學到什么?行為經濟學家基思·陳(Keith Chen)介紹了他的研究中發(fā)現的奇妙關聯：沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的語言——“明天下雨”而不是“下明天的雨”——跟儲蓄比例有很強的相關性。

中英演講稿：

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?

全球金融危機讓人們對早在亞當·斯密時代就被提出的一個古老的經濟學問題 重新產生了興趣： “為什么經濟規(guī)模和政治體制看起來相似的國家之間， 國民的儲蓄習慣差別如此之大?”

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.

已經有很多經濟學大師花畢生精力研究了這個問題， 取得了很大的進展，我們對這個問題 也有了很深的認識。 我今天要跟大家分享的是一個很有意思的假說， 我研究了人們說的語言的(語法)結構和他們的存錢習慣之間的關系， 并得到了一些意外的新發(fā)現。 我們先介紹國民儲蓄比率，再介紹語言差別， 然后我們把這兩者聯系起來。

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.

我們從OECD國家開始考慮， OECD即“經濟合作與發(fā)展組織”。 基本上OECD包含的都是 世界上最富有的工業(yè)化國家。 而且加入OECD組織的國家都需要符合 民主政府、開放市場和自由貿易等要求。 雖然這些國家都是很相似的，但是他們的存儲行為差別很大。

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.

看這張圖的左邊， 你會看到多數OECD成員國年儲蓄率超過GDP的1/4， 而部分成員國的年儲蓄率達到了GDP的1/3。 在圖右側的這些國家，最右邊的是希臘， 我們看到在過去25年 希臘的國民儲蓄率剛超過10%。 需要注意美國和英國緊隨其后。

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.

現在我們看到存儲比率的巨大差別， 但是語言跟這種差異有什么關系呢? 讓我告訴你語言之間的本質差異所在。 語言學家和認知科學家已經研究這個問題很多年了， 而我今天將會將這兩種行為聯系起來。

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.

你們可能注意到了我是華裔。 我在美國中西部長大。 我很小的時候就意識到了 中文在家庭關系的叫法—— 實際上更本質的—— 甚至在思維方式上都(跟英文)有很大的不同。

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.

怎么解釋呢，我舉個例子。 假設你我在聊天，提到了我的叔叔(uncle)。 你完全理解這個英文的意思。 但是如果我們用普通話聊天， 我就頭疼了。 這里面?zhèn)鬟f的信息如此之多。 我無法用中文告訴你 這是我的“叔叔”， 而是會附加上更多的(家庭關系)信息。 如果用中文，我就要一并告訴你 這個人是我爸爸這邊的還是媽媽這邊的 是婚姻關系還是血緣關系; 如果是我爸爸的兄弟， 年紀比我爸爸大還是比我爸爸小。 這些都是必須的，中文無法省略這些信息。 事實上，如果要我不弄錯的話 我就要不斷的去想這之間的關系。

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."

這是小時候讓我很好奇的事情， 而現在我作為一個經濟學家更加好奇的是 不同的語言在如何表示時間上的差異。 例如，在英語中需要用明確的語法變化來表示不同的時態(tài)， 如果我說過去下過雨：It rained yesterday; 正在下雨：It is raining now; 將要下雨：It will rain tomorrow. 注意英語中需要很多的元素來表示事件發(fā)生的時間。 因為我需要根據我要說的事件的時間 來調整自己要說的話，It will rain或It's going to rain.英語語法禁止你說成：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.

中文的表達方式跟英文恰恰相反。 一個說中文的人說出來的話 會讓一個說英文的人聽起來怪怪的。 他們會說，“昨天下雨”、“現在下雨”、“明天下雨”。 從更深的角度來看，中文并沒有將時間進行嚴格的分割， 而英文則將此作為語言正確與否的準則之一。

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."

這種差異是不是 只有在中文和英文差異這么大的語言之間才會有? 實際上，不是。 你們當中的很多人都知道英語屬于日爾曼語系。 你們可能沒有意識到英語算是這個語系的一個異類。 英語是日爾曼語系中唯一需要這些的。 例如，說日爾曼語系的人 會很自然的用以下的話表達 明天下雨：Morgen regnet es. 說英語的人聽了就類似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，作為一個行為經濟學家，想到一個有趣的假設。 你描述時間的方式，你的語言迫使你思考時間的方式， 是否會影響到你對不同時間段的偏好?你們說的是英語，區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的。 這意味著每次你談論到未來的時間 或者未來要發(fā)生的事情時， 你需要在語法層面將未來和現在分來， 就像是兩者之間有本質不同一樣。 現在假設這種語言上的差別 讓你每次說話的時候都意識到當下和未來細微差別。 如果這個假設成立， 會導致“未來”看起來跟“現在”更加遙遠一些， 要你存錢就會困難一些。 另一方面，如果你的語言沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)， 你說現在和未來的句式是一樣的。 這點細微的差別會讓你覺得他們是一樣的， 會讓你更傾向于存錢。

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.

現在我有了一套奇特的理論。 我是教授，教授就是生產奇思怪想的。 但是你怎么檢驗這樣一套理論呢?我閱讀了大量的語言學文獻作為調研。 有意思的是，沒有將來時態(tài)的語言 全球各地都有。 歐洲北部也有一些語言沒有將來時態(tài)。 有意思的是，當你開始收集數據時， 你就會發(fā)現這些說沒有將來時態(tài)的語言的國家， 很大程度上，恰恰是最喜歡儲蓄的國家。

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.

為了給你們一點提示， 請看看剛才提到的OECD儲蓄比例圖。 你看到相比那些語言中 區(qū)別將來時態(tài)的國家， 沒有區(qū)分時態(tài)的國家的儲蓄率更高并且總體上更靠左邊。 平均的差值有多大? 約占各國每年GDP的5%。 這種差別持續(xù)了25年，對國家總體財富有著長遠的影響。

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.

現在雖然這些發(fā)現能說明問題， 但是比較的國家之間在很多很多方面都有差異， 有時候很難將這些差異歸結為某個原因。 我將想你們展示，我過去一年收集到的， 作為經濟學家能夠得到的 所有的大數據集， 并且我正在嘗試將國家之間可能的差異性消除 希望可以為(我理論提到的)這段關系提供證據。 總體而言，無論我目前如何嘗試，我都無法將這種關聯消除。 讓我告訴你們，你們能做到什么程度。

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.

一種可能的驗證方式就是收集了全球范圍的(經濟)數據信息。 例如，歐洲的健康、老齡化及退休情況統(tǒng)計。 通過這個數據采集工作你會發(fā)現歐洲退休老人 對于調查人員是極度有耐心的。 (笑) 想象一下你是一個比利時的退休老人，有一天有人跑來敲你家的門。 “打擾了，你能跟我說下你的股票投資情況么? 你知道自己的房子值多少錢么?方便告訴我么?你的走廊有10米這么長么? 如果有，你能走一次讓我看看需要多長時間么?你能否用你的慣用手，用力握這個設備， 讓我測試一下你的握力? 你能否吹一下這個管子，讓我測量一下你的肺活量? 一天過去了。 (笑) 將這些數據與USAID(美國國際開發(fā)署) 在非洲發(fā)展中國家的人口健康統(tǒng)計數據結合 USAID的數據很詳細，例如，尼日利亞農村家庭中 HIV感染情況等一手信息。 將這些數據與世界價值調查(value survey)結合， 后者統(tǒng)計政治觀點和，很幸運的， 全世界上百個國家上億家庭的存儲行為信息。

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.

獲得所有這些數據，綜合起來，你就得到這樣的一張圖。 你會發(fā)現全球范圍內有九個國家其國民中有相當多的人使用 沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)和區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的語言。 我接下來要做的就是通過統(tǒng)計匹配的方式 找到各個方面都近似相同的家庭， 然后去看看在控制了這些變量之后 語言和儲蓄之間是否還存在著聯系。

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.

我們能夠控制那些特征? 我考慮的匹配包括出生地和居住地， 人口信息——性別、年齡—— 相對居住國的收入水平， 受教育程度，以及家庭成員結構。 我發(fā)現在歐洲就有六種不同的婚姻組合方式。 最精細的分類方法是按照宗教信仰進行分類—— 將全球分成了72個不同的宗教團體—— 非常精細的分類了。 14億家庭每個家庭都有獨特性。

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.

現在我要說的比較，都是在這些 各個方面近似一致的家庭之間進行的。 讓我們假設這個實驗找到了 布魯塞爾的兩個家庭， 在別的每個方面都很相似， 但是一個家庭說佛蘭芒語(Flemish)另一個家庭說法語;或是兩個住在尼日利亞農村的家庭， 一個說豪薩語(Hausa)另一戶說伊博語(Igbo)。

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.

現在在這么精細的控制水平下， 語言的時態(tài)特點是否還會影響到儲蓄習慣? 是的，語言中沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的人， 在任何給定年份中儲蓄的比例都要高30%。 這種差異是否有累積效應?是的，當他們退休的時候，語言中沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的人， 在收入穩(wěn)定不變的情況下，要多25%的儲蓄。

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.

我們能夠得到更多的結論么?正如我告訴你的，我們出于經濟研究目的收集了很多的醫(yī)療健康數據。 我們能將健康相關的行為比作儲蓄行為么? 例如，吸煙這個事情， 吸煙可以看作反向的儲蓄。 如果儲蓄是增加當下的痛苦增加未來的快感， 那么吸煙的效果正好相反。 吸煙用未來的痛苦換取當下的快感。 我們假設吸煙跟語言時態(tài)的關系應該跟儲蓄的關系相反。 我們的統(tǒng)計支持了我們的推斷。 語言沒有區(qū)分將來時態(tài)的家庭成員相比而言 在任何時間段中吸煙的可能性相比都要少20%到24%， 在他們退休的時候超重的可能性 相比少13%到17%， 在最后一次性行為中 使用安全套的概率要高21%。 我可以這么一直不停地列舉下去。 很難找到語言時態(tài)特征對于儲蓄行為 沒有影響的實例。

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.

我和在耶魯的的語言學同事和經濟學同事剛剛開始這項研究， 探索和理解每次我們說話的時候 (語言)對于我們的未來的輕微的影響。 最終的目標是， 一旦我們理解了這些微妙的效果是如何影響到我們的決策的， 我們希望可以為人們提供 更好的工具，讓他們在未來 理性的存錢，理性的投資。

Thank you very much.

非常感謝。