Charitable giving responses to education budgets

Jonathan Meer and Hedieh Tajali

Economic Inquiry, 2025, vol. 63, issue 3, 865-887

Abstract: Do changes in government spending affect voluntary contributions to those recipients? We examine how changes in K‐12 education budgets impact donations to teachers using data from DonorsChoose.org, an online crowdfunding platform for public school teachers to raise money. We find a positive correlation between budgets and voluntary contributions when not accounting for their endogenous relationship. Estimates using instrumental variables show evidence for crowd‐out of private giving, though the magnitudes are small relative to spending and do not meaningfully offset budget changes. These results are driven entirely by teachers' posting of requests.

Date: 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13286

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