Are charitable donations a luxury good of the rich? Evidence from a survey and actual behavior in a superdiverse metropolis

Abstract

ObjectivePrevious studies on charitable giving have emphasized the importance of socioeconomic status in explaining why individuals choose to donate or not to donate money. Other explanations, such as social capital or local contexts, have also been investigated, but these perspectives are rarely combined and tested against an actual behavioral outcome measure. We seek to compare the statistical importance of these explanations for individual‐level donation decisions.MethodsOur study investigates survey respondents’ choices to repeatedly donate their earned incentive after a completed interview in the three waves of the Immigrant German Election Study II from 2021. In each wave, respondents were offered an incentive worth 10 euros, which they could either keep as a gift card or donate to the local food bank. This decision is a measurement of real rather than self‐reported donation behavior. We combine individual‐level variables and neighborhood‐level variables that capture the heterogeneity of our sample to systematically compare explanations for this donation decision.ResultsWe find that the respondents’ self‐assessed economic situation and sociopolitical preferences in favor of more social spending by the state, rather than the respondents’ objective socioeconomic status, have strong positive effects on the total amount donated throughout the survey.ConclusionNot the rich per se, but those who think they are doing well economically, and who are on the redistributive left, give more to others. These findings remain robust after controlling for the strong heterogeneity of our sample.