"Pick up on their parents' patterns" isn't the same thing, though. At the very least, it's an extra remove away, and probably modified by other control variable

"Pick up on their parents' patterns" isn't the same thing, though. At the very least, it's an extra remove away, and probably modified by other control variables in the study like 'parental responsiveness'. I'm not claiming that family wealth doesn't affect patience, but I see lots of people giving the specific rationale that being poor teaches people to spend their money immediately because it won't be available later. That doesn't make much sense to me, partly because people learn that pattern first-hand in late childhood or later, and more importantly because the original marshmallow test study stayed predictive within an entirely above-middle-class population. In general, I don't think the current data actually offers much evidence for any specific narrative about how wealth causes this effect. Assessing that would call for information like the effect of relative versus absolute wealth, or at the very least a breakdown of what income levels this correlation happens over.