New paper on national differences in time preference.
Combines many different measures (e.g. survey questions and field studies), standardizes them and extracts a common factor.
Blue: people on average wait for future rewards
Red: people on average want immediate gain

This common factor is correlated with various things like
the nation's equity risk premium (diff between risky equity and low risk gov bonds), years of schooling, and others (credit rating, human development, etc)

Source: Universal Time Preference https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245692

I think of time preference as a element in life-history strategy: fast life-history peoples are not inclined to wait for future rewards, slow life-history peoples are able to be more patient