The Intensive Margin of Altruism: Impact of Covid-19 on Charitable Giving in England and Wales

Esteban Jaimovich

No 297, Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE)

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on private donations using data on charities’ annual returns filed to the Charity Commission for England and Wales. By exploiting variation in mortality rates across narrow geographic units (local authorities), I show that donations to health charities operating in more severely hit areas have increased significantly more than those to health charities in areas hit more mildly, and that this effect is quantitatively large. In addition, when comparing the post-pandemic increase in donations to health charities vis-a-vis to non-health charities within a triple-difference setup, the analysis reveals that the growth differential between them turns out to be greater in areas that suffered worse fatality rates. The evidence in the paper suggests that the relative severity of adverse events is a crucial dimension guiding the allocation of charitable giving.

Keywords: Charitable giving; Nonprofit organisations; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 L30 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2024-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoz:wpaper:297

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