Who gives? A literature review of predictors of charitable giving. Part Two: Gender, family composition and income

Abstract

This is the second of two articles in which we present a comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary academic literature on philanthropy. In this article, we identify the following predictors of charitable giving by individuals and/or households: gender, family composition and income. For each predictor, we discuss the evidence for the mechanisms that may explain why the predictor is correlated with giving. We conclude with a brief agenda for future research.

Examining the Association of Welfare State Expenditure, Non-profit Regimes and Charitable Giving

“…On the individual level we control for a number of characteristics known to influence charitable behaviour (see for example Bekkers and Wiepking 2011b;Wiepking and Bekkers 2012): Regarding socio-demographics we insert a dichotomous variable indicating whether the respondent is female or not and add the age in years (see Table 1). The level of urbanization is taken into account because studies show that people living in rather rural areas are more likely to donate (Bekkers 2006, p. 350f).…”

“…The large majority of research on donations has addressed determinants of giving behaviour on the individual level (for an overview see Bekkers and Wiepking 2011a, b;Wiepking and Bekkers 2012).…”

Heterogeneity in Crowding-out: When Are Charitable Donations Responsive to Government Support?

“…First, people who are able to donate might also be better able to change their donations. It is known that people with a paid job and more wealth donate higher amounts than people who are not in paid labor or with lower wealth, and the higher educated donate more than the lower educated (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011a;Wiepking & Bekkers, 2012). More financial resources also enable people to change their donations more easily because they decrease the marginal value of a dollar that can be spent on a public goal.…”

The Impact of Political Cleavages, Religiosity, and Values on Attitudes towards Nonprofit Organizations

“…The common socio-demographic factors that have been found to have an impact are gender, ethnicity, age, income, and educational background (Schlegelmilch et al 1997;Wilson 2012;Sargeant 1999;Einolf 2011;Gittell and Tebaldi 2006;Wiepking and Bekkers 2012). Social contexts are social factors that have an impact on attitudes towards NPOs, such as the feeling of belonging to a community (Reed and Selbee 2001;Wilson 2012), prior engagement in and social ties to NPO activities (Sokolowski 1996) or, more generally, greater levels of social capital (Brown and Ferris 2007;Wang and Graddy 2008), as well as social incentives such as social conformity and social exchange (Bekkers 2010;Green and Webb 1997).…”