God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana

Emmanuelle Auriol, ,, Amma Panin, Eva Raiber and Paul Seabright

No 14301, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations. We randomize enrollment of members of a Pentecostal church in Ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy. Then church members allocate money between them- selves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with signi cant stakes. Members enrolled in insurance give signi cantly less money to their own church compared to members that only receive information about the insurance. Enrollment also reduces giving towards other spiritual goods. We set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance. The implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist God. Survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel.

Keywords: Economics of religion; Informal insurance; Charitable giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 G22 O12 O17 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-ias and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

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Related works:
Journal Article: God Insures those Who Pay? Formal Insurance and Religious Offerings in Ghana* (2020)
Working Paper: God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana (2020)
Working Paper: God insures those who pay?Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana (2017)
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