Gender and racial disparities in altruism in social networks

Abstract

This paper studies gender and racial disparities in altruism among social network members who are endogenously linked. We specify group (gender or race) specific altruistic interactions models, as well as intra- and inter-group altruistic interactions models, to capture the heterogeneous patterns of altruism associated with the characteristics of two individuals in pairs. We apply the models to the Add Health data to identify altruism and social interaction effects on academic achievement and smoking behaviors among adolescents. The results indicate that females are generally more altruistic than males, and whites appear to be the most altruistic racial group. We also find that blacks exhibit spiteful effects towards other black students who are considered to “act white.”