| dc.description.abstract | The economics of altruistic behavior, and specifically the economics of charitable giving, is a large and rich field of research. This is not without cause: charitable giving is a significant household decision. We contribute in several ways to better understanding this fundamental household financial decision.
Despite widespread interest, there is little systematic evidence on the relationship between income, wealth, and charitable giving. In Chapter II, we use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) spanning 2001-2017 to provide descriptive statistics on this relationship. We find that, irrespective of specification, donative behavior increases with greater resources.
Charitable giving is also incentivized by the U.S. tax code. In Chapter III, we use the PSID to get up-to-date estimates the tax price elasticity of charitable giving. We find that households that always itemize are less sensitive to changes in the tax treatment of donations than households that switch itemizing status. We apply these results to the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, taking into account the marginal propensity to donate from the increase in disposable income expected for most households, and predict a ~3.5% decrease in total individual giving.
In Chapter IV, we apply this methodology and data to evaluate a hypothetical policy world where religious organizations (e.g. churches, mosques) lose their tax-exempt status. We document the poverty of reliable, available data to robustly answer the different dimensions of this question. Despite this, we roughly estimate a significant increase in churches’ expenses alongside a 1.8% decrease in giving to religious organizations.
Chapter V focuses in on giving behavior to one specific cause type: disaster relief. We consider decisions made by a sample of Texan adults in two, lab-in-the-field, modified dictator games. Three decisions target different charitable organizations, all of which have a disaster-relief mission, but differ in the level of operation. A fourth targets an individual recipient who was a victim of a fire. Giving is significantly higher to national and local organizations compared to state. We find a higher propensity to donate and larger amount donated to the individual relative to all organizations. Subsequent analysis compares a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates with donations to specific charities. | en |
