Altruism and the Child Cycle of Alumni Donations

Meer, Jonathan; Rosen, Harvey S.

doi:10.1257/pol.1.1.258

This setting lets you change the way you view articles. You can choose to have articles open in a dialog window, a new tab, or directly in the same window.

Open in Dialog
Open in New Tab
Open in same window

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy: Vol. 1 No. 1 (February 2009)

AEJ: Policy Volume. 1, Issue 1 | left

Expand

Quick Tools:

Print Article Summary Email Link to this Article Export Citation
Sign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter Subscription Information
(Institutional Administrator Access)

Explore:

AEJ: Policy - All Issues

AEJ: Policy Forthcoming Articles

Altruism and the Child Cycle of Alumni Donations

Article Citation

Meer, Jonathan, and Harvey S. Rosen. 2009. "Altruism and the Child Cycle of Alumni Donations." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 1(1): 258-86.

DOI: 10.1257/pol.1.1.258

Abstract

We study alumni contributions to an anonymous research university. If alumni believe donations will increase the likelihood of their child's admission, and if this belief helps motivate their giving, then the pattern of giving should vary systematically with the ages of their children, whether the children ultimately apply to the university, and the admissions outcome. We call this pattern the child cycle of alumni giving. The evidence is consistent with the child-cycle pattern. Thus, while altruism drives some giving, the hope for a reciprocal benefit also plays a role. We compute rough estimates of the proportion of giving due to selfish motives. (JEL D91, D64, I21)

Article Full-Text Access

Full-text Article

Additional Materials

Download Data Set (85.70 KB)

Authors

Meer, Jonathan (Stanford U)
Rosen, Harvey S. (Princeton U)

JEL Classifications

D64: Altruism
D91: Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
I21: Analysis of Education

Comments

View Comments on This Article (0) | Login to post a comment