IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cepsud/236.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Donative Behavior at the End of Life

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Meer

    (Texas A&M University)

  • Harvey S. Rosen

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

A general finding in the empirical literature on charitable giving is that among older individuals, both the probability of giving and the conditional amount of donations decrease with age, ceteris paribus. In this paper, we use data on giving by alumni at an anonymous university to investigate end-of-life giving patterns. Our main finding is that taking into account the approach of death substantially changes the age-giving profile for the elderly in one segment of the age distribution, the independent effect of an increase in age on giving actually changes from negative to positive. We examine how the decline in giving as death approaches varies with the length of time that a given condition is likely to bring about death, and the individual's age when he died. We find that for individuals who died from conditions that bring about death fairly quickly, there is little decline in giving as death approaches compared to those who died from other causes. Further, the decline in giving as death approaches is steeper for the elderly (for whom death is less likely to be a surprise) than for the relatively young. These findings suggest that our primary result, that failing to take into account the approach of death leads to biased inferences with respect to the age-giving profile, is not merely an artifact of some kind of nonlinearity in the relationship between age and giving.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Meer & Harvey S. Rosen, 2013. "Donative Behavior at the End of Life," Working Papers 1466, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:cepsud:236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/236rosen.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clotfelter, C. T., 2003. "Alumni giving to elite private colleges and universities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 109-120, April.
    2. Warren B. Hrung, 2004. "After‐Life Consumption and Charitable Giving," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 731-745, July.
    3. Kathleen McGarry & Robert F. Schoeni, 1995. "Transfer Behavior in the Health and Retirement Study: Measurement and the Redistribution of Resources within the Family," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30, pages 184-226.
    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. Elinder, Mikael & Erixson, Oscar & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 17-30.
    2. Peter Koczanski & Harvey S. Rosen, 2019. "Are Millennials Really So Selfish? Preliminary Evidence from the Philanthropy Panel Study," NBER Working Papers 25813, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Pierdzioch, Christian & Emrich, Eike, 2014. "Internet und die Bindung Ehrenamtlicher am Beispiel des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes," Working Papers of the European Institute for Socioeconomics 5, European Institute for Socioeconomics (EIS), Saarbrücken.
    4. Harvey S. Rosen & Peter Koczanski, 2019. "Are Millennials Really So Selfish? Preliminary Evidence from the Philanthropy Panel Study," Working Papers 254, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    5. Sanders, Michael & Smith, Sarah, 2016. "Can simple prompts increase bequest giving? Field evidence from a legal call centre," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 179-191.

    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. repec:pri:cepsud:236rosen is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Meer, Jonathan & Rosen, Harvey S., 2013. "Donative behavior at the end of life," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 192-201.
    3. Meer, Jonathan & Rosen, Harvey S., 2013. "Donative behavior at the end of life," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 192-201.
    4. repec:hka:wpaper:2013-20 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    6. George R. Goethals & Gordon C. Winston & David J. Zimmerman & Laurie C. Hurshman & Adam C. Sischy & Georgi Zhelev, 2004. "Who Cares? How Students View Faculty and Other Adults in US Higher Education," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-67, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    7. Lei, Xiaoyan & Giles, John & Hu, Yuqing & Park, Albert & Strauss, John & Zhao, Yaohui, 2012. "Patterns and correlates of intergenerational non-time transfers : evidence from CHARLS," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6076, The World Bank.
    8. Ana Fernandes, 2011. "Altruism, labor supply and redistributive neutrality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1443-1469, October.
    9. repec:pri:cepsud:224rosen is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Dugan, K. & Mullin, C.H. & Siegfried, J.J., 2000. "Undergraduate Financial Aid and Subsequent Giving Behavior," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-57, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    11. Olivera, Javier, 2017. "The division of inter-vivos parental transfers in Europe," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 9(C), pages 41-51.
    12. Max Groneck & Frederic Krehl, 2014. "Bequests and Informal Long-Term Care: Evidence from the HRS Exit Interviews," Working Paper Series in Economics 79, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    13. Michael D. Hurd & James P. Smith & Julie Zissimopoulos, 2007. "Inter-vivos Giving Over the Lifecycle," Working Papers WR-524, RAND Corporation.
    14. Costa-Font, Joan & Jiménez-Martín, Sergi & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Do Public Caregiving Subsidies and Supports affect the Provision of Care and Transfers?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    15. Janet Currie & Mark Stabile & Phongsack Manivong & Leslie L. Roos, 2010. "Child Health and Young Adult Outcomes," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(3).
    16. Firman Witoelar, 2013. "Risk Sharing within the Extended Family: Evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(1), pages 65-94.
    17. Erixson, Oscar & Ohlsson, Henry, 2014. "Estate division: Equal sharing as choice, social norm, and legal requirement," Working Paper Series 2014:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    18. Meer, Jonathan & Rosen, Harvey S., 2009. "The impact of athletic performance on alumni giving: An analysis of microdata," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 287-294, June.
    19. François-Charles Wolff & Claudine Attias-Donfut, 2007. "Les comportements de transferts intergénérationnels en Europe," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 403(1), pages 117-141.
    20. Narayana Kocherlakota & Luigi Pistaferri, 2009. "Asset Pricing Implications of Pareto Optimality with Private Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 555-590, June.
    21. Yelowitz, Aaron S, 2000. "Using the Medicare Buy-In Program to Estimate the Effect of Medicaid on SSI Participation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(3), pages 419-441, July.
    22. Ren Mu & Yang Du, 2017. "Pension Coverage for Parents and Educational Investment in Children: Evidence from Urban China," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 483-503.
    23. Barnet-Verzat, Christine & Wolff, Francois-Charles, 2002. "Motives for pocket money allowance and family incentives," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 339-366, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    charitable giving; aging; financing of higher education; philanthropy; terror management theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:pri:cepsud:236. 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: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprius.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.