IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bri/uobdis/20-736.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Altruism born of suffering? The impact of an adverse health shock on pro-social behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • Nicole Black
  • Elaine De Gruyter
  • Dennis Petrie
  • Sarah Smith

Abstract

‘Altruism born of suffering’ (ABS) predicts that, following an adverse life event such as a health shock, individuals may become motivated to act pro-socially. However, this has not yet been examined systematically. Using data from the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that a health shock does not lead to a general increase in pro-social behaviour. Instead, ABS is akin to a specific shock that affects giving to health charities, with an increase in the probability of giving and amounts donated to health charities coming at the expense of other non-religious charities.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Black & Elaine De Gruyter & Dennis Petrie & Sarah Smith, 2020. "Altruism born of suffering? The impact of an adverse health shock on pro-social behaviour," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 20/736, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:bri:uobdis:20/736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/efm/media/workingpapers/working_papers/pdffiles/dp20736.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Liu, Kai, 2016. "Insuring against health shocks: Health insurance and household choices," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 16-32.
    2. Kimberley Scharf & Sarah Smith & Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, 2022. "Lift and Shift: The Effect of Fundraising Interventions in Charity Space and Time," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 296-321, August.
    3. Jones, M.A. & Rice, N. & Zantomio, F., 2016. "Acute health shocks and labour market outcomes," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 16/04, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Adena, Maja & Huck, Steffen, 2019. "Giving once, giving twice: A two-period field experiment on intertemporal crowding in charitable giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 127-134.
    5. Gregori Baetschmann & Kevin E. Staub & Rainer Winkelmann, 2015. "Consistent estimation of the fixed effects ordered logit model," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(3), pages 685-703, June.
    6. James Andreoni & Eleanor Brown & Isaac Rischall, 2003. "Charitable Giving by Married Couples Who Decides and Why Does it Matter?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(1).
    7. Reinstein David A, 2011. "Does One Charitable Contribution Come at the Expense of Another?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-54, June.
    8. V. Kerry Smith & Donald H. Taylor & Frank A. Sloan & F. Reed Johnson & William H. Desvousges, 2001. "Do Smokers Respond To Health Shocks?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(4), pages 675-687, November.
    9. Uri Gneezy & Stephan Meier & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "When and Why Incentives (Don't) Work to Modify Behavior," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 191-210, Fall.
    10. Dawes, Robyn M & Thaler, Richard H, 1988. "Anomalies: Cooperation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 187-197, Summer.
    11. Christina M. Fong, 2007. "Evidence from an Experiment on Charity to Welfare Recipients: Reciprocity, Altruism and the Empathic Responsiveness Hypothesis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 1008-1024, July.
    12. Konow, James, 2010. "Mixed feelings: Theories of and evidence on giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3-4), pages 279-297, April.
    13. Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Neslihan Uler, 2019. "Demand for Giving to Multiple Charities: An Experimental Study," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 725-753.
    14. Atkinson, A.B., 2009. "Giving overseas and public policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 647-653, June.
    15. Tatyana Deryugina & Benjamin M. Marx, 2021. "Is the Supply of Charitable Donations Fixed? Evidence from Deadly Tornadoes," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 383-398, September.
    16. García-Gómez, Pilar, 2011. "Institutions, health shocks and labour market outcomes across Europe," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 200-213, January.
    17. Lindeboom, Maarten & Llena-Nozal, Ana & van der Klaauw, Bas, 2016. "Health shocks, disability and work," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 186-200.
    18. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. De Gruyter, Elaine & Petrie, Dennis & Black, Nicole, 2023. "Household donations of time and money in response to a health shock," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    2. Blanco, Esther & Baier, Alexandra & Holzmeister, Felix & Jaber-Lopez, Tarek & Struwe, Natalie, 2022. "Substitution of social sustainability concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    3. Maria Cotofan & Konstantinos Matakos, 2023. "Adapting or compounding? The effects of recurring labour shocks on stated and revealed preferences for redistribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp1957, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Esteban Jaimovich, 2024. "The Intensive Margin of Altruism: Impact of Covid-19 on Charitable Giving in England and Wales," Working Papers 297, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    5. Cotofan, Maria & Matakos, Konstantinos, 2023. "Adapting or compounding? The effects of recurring labour shocks on stated and revealed preferences for redistribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121297, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Georganas, Sotiris & Laliotis, Ioannis & Velias, Alina, 2022. "The best is yet to come: The impact of retirement on prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 589-615.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adena, Maja & Hager, Anselm, 2020. "Does online fundraising increase charitable giving? A nation-wide field experiment on Facebook," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-302, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Schwirplies, Claudia, 2023. "Does additional demand for charitable aid increase giving? Evidence from Hurricane Sandy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 53-73.
    3. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2022. "Does online salience predict charitable giving? Evidence from SMS text donations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 134-149.
    4. Blanco, Esther & Baier, Alexandra & Holzmeister, Felix & Jaber-Lopez, Tarek & Struwe, Natalie, 2022. "Substitution of social sustainability concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    5. Gallier, Carlo & Goeschl, Timo & Kesternich, Martin & Lohse, Johannes & Reif, Christiane & Römer, Daniel, 2023. "Inter-charity competition under spatial differentiation: Sorting, crowding, and spillovers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 457-468.
    6. Eckel, Catherine & Guney, Begum & Uler, Neslihan, 2020. "Independent vs. Coordinated Fundraising: Understanding the Role of Information," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    7. Alt, Marius & Gallier, Carlo, 2022. "Incentives and intertemporal behavioral spillovers: A two-period experiment on charitable giving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 959-972.
    8. Jan Schmitz, 2021. "Is Charitable Giving a Zero-Sum Game? The Effect of Competition Between Charities on Giving Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6333-6349, October.
    9. Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Verwimp, Philip, 2022. "Pro-social behavior after a disaster: Evidence from a storm hitting an open-air festival," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 493-510.
    10. Tine Hjernø Lesner & Ole Dahl Rasmussen, 2014. "The identifiable victim effect in charitable giving: evidence from a natural field experiment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(36), pages 4409-4430, December.
    11. repec:esx:essedp:762 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Deck, Cary & Murphy, James J., 2019. "Donors change both their level and pattern of giving in response to contests among charities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 91-106.
    13. Kellner, Christian & Reinstein, David & Riener, Gerhard & Sanders, Michael, 2015. "Giving and Probability," Economics Discussion Papers 13794, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    14. De Gruyter, Elaine & Petrie, Dennis & Black, Nicole, 2023. "Household donations of time and money in response to a health shock," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    15. Antoine Marsaudon & Lise Rochaix, 2017. "Impact of acute health shocks on cigarette consumption
      [Impact d'un choc de santé sur la consommation de cigarette]      ," PSE Working Papers halshs-01626024, HAL.
    16. Julia Cagé & Malka Guillot, 2021. "Is Charitable Giving Political? Evidence from Wealth and Income Tax Returns," Working Papers hal-03877993, HAL.
    17. Sautua, Santiago I., 2022. "Donation requests following a pay rise," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    18. Metzger, Laura & Günther, Isabel, 2019. "Making an impact? The relevance of information on aid effectiveness for charitable giving. A laboratory experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 18-33.
    19. Giacomo Degli Antoni & Marco Faillo, 2021. "The number but not the variety of nonprofit organizations affects donations: evidence from an experiment," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 68(3), pages 281-299, September.
    20. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2021. "Online Salience and Charitable Giving : Evidence from SMS Donations," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1325, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    21. Zachary Halberstam & James R. Hines Jr., 2023. "Quality-Aware Tax Incentives for Charitable Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10250, CESifo.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bri:uobdis:20/736. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vicky Jackson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sebriuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.