Education and Philanthropy

Education and Philanthropy.
Learning to Care: Explaining the Effect of Education on Philanthropy

Rene Bekkers studies determinants of philanthropy: donations of resources (money, time, blood, organs) for the benefit of some collective beyond the family. Education has often been found to be one of the main correlates of philanthropy. Higher educated people give more. But why?
The goal of his research project is to understand which mechanisms promote philanthropy in general, and which mechanisms are responsible for the relationship between education and philanthropy.

Dr. Bekkers presents his approach in the explanation of philanthropy. Roughly speaking, previous research on philanthropy has uncovered eight different mechanisms: (1) solicitation; (2) awareness of need; (3) costs; (4) reputation; (5) mood; (6) self-image; (7) changing the world; (8) confidence. An interaction of these mechanisms may explain the effects of education on philanthropy. Then I will discuss findings of the first four research papers that identify the effects of some of these mechanisms.

Paper 1: René Bekkers and Pamala Wiepking (2006). "To Give or Not to Give: That's the Question." _Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly_, 35 (3): 533-540.

In this paper we examined a methodological explanation of the education effect: perhaps higher educated persons are better at reporting about giving than lower educated persons. We find evidence for this explanation, but still find a significant education effect on charitable giving using an extensive questionnaire that increases recall.

Paper 2: René Bekkers (2005). „‚Nee heb je, ja kun je krijgen‚: de effectiviteit van fondsenwervings- en rekruteringsstrategieën van maatschappelijke organisaties‰. Pp. 129-152 in: Völker, B. (Ed.). Burgers in de buurt: Samenleven in school, wijk en vereniging. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

In this paper I examined the solicitation mechanism as an explanation of the education effect: perhaps higher educated persons are more likely to engage in philanthropy because they are more likely to be asked to do so. I find only limited evidence for this explanation. While soliciting the higher educated would be rational from the point of view of nonprofit organizations in need of support, I find that they do not solicit contributions more often from the higher educated than from the lower educated.

Paper 3: René Bekkers and Nan Dirk de Graaf (2005). _Education and Prosocial Behavior_. Working Paper.

In this paper we examined the role of resources: perhaps higher educated persons are more likely to engage in philanthropy because the costs of doing so are lower for them. We find evidence that the effects of education on various examples of prosocial behavior are mediated by health, wealth, home ownership, income, verbal intelligence, and communication skills. However, even when these resources are controlled statistically, a positive relationship of the level of education with organ donation, membership in voluntary associations, and charitable giving remains.

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