Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-7g5wt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T22:19:55.364Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parental background and other-regarding preferences in children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Michal Bauer ,
Julie Chytilová  and
Barbara Pertold-Gebicka
Michal Bauer
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University, Opletalova 26, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic CERGE-EI (a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), Politických vězňů 7, 111 21 Prague, Czech Republic
Julie Chytilová*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University, Opletalova 26, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Barbara Pertold-Gebicka
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University, Opletalova 26, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic Department of Economics and Business, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Other-regarding preferences are important for establishing and maintaining cooperative outcomes. In this paper, we study how the formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood is related to parental background. Our subjects, aged 4–12 years, are classified into other-regarding types based on simple binary-choice dictator games. The main finding is that the children of parents with low education are less altruistic, more selfish, and more likely to be weakly spiteful. This link is robust to controlling for a rich set of children’s characteristics and class fixed effects. It also stands out against the overall development of preferences, as we find children to become more altruistic, less selfish, and less likely to be weakly spiteful with increasing age. The results, supported by a complementary analysis of World Values Survey data, suggest an important role of socialization in the formation of other-regarding preferences.

Keywords

Other-regarding preferencesAltruismSelfishnessChildrenFamily backgroundField experiment

JEL classification

D64: Altruism • Philanthropy • Intergenerational Transfers I24: Education and Inequality C93: Field Experiments
Type
Manuscript
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 24 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-013-9355-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Adriani, F., & Sonderegger, S. (2009). Why do parents socialize their children to behave pro-socially? An information-based theory. Journal of Public Economics, 93(11), 1119–1124. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.08.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Almås, I., Cappelen, A. W., Salvanes, K. G., Sørensen, E. O., & Tungodden, B. (2012). Willingness to compete: family matters. Norwegian School of Economics, Discussion Paper No. 24/2012.Google Scholar
Almås, I., Cappelen, A. W., Sørensen, E. O., & Tungodden, B. (2010). Fairness and the development of inequality acceptance. Science, 328(5982), 1176–1178. 10.1126/science.1187300CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aughinbaugh, A., & Gittleman, M. (2003). Does money matter? A comparison of the effect of income on child development in the United States and Great Britain. The Journal of Human Resources, 38(2), 416–440. 10.2307/1558750CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, A., Burns, J., Miller, L., & Shaw, I. (2011). Individual notions of distributive justice and relative economic status. University of Oxford Discussion Paper No. 2011005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartling, B., Fehr, E., & Schunk, D. (2012). Health effects on children’s willingness to compete. Experimental Economics, 15(1), 58–70. 10.1007/s10683-011-9288-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, M., Cassar, A., Chytilová, J., & Henrich, J. (unpublished results). Warfare experience during ontogeny increases egalitarian and parochial motivations. CERGE-EI.Google Scholar
Benenson, J. F., Pascoe, J., & Radmore, N. (2007). Children’s altruistic behavior in the dictator game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(3), 168–175. 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.10.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bettinger, E., & Slonim, R. (2007). Patience among children. Journal of Public Economics, 91(1–2), 343–363. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.05.010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisin, A., & Verdier, T. (2001). The economics of cultural transmission and the dynamics of preferences. Journal of Economic Theory, 97(2), 298–319. 10.1006/jeth.2000.2678CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, G. E., & Ockenfels, A. (2000). ERC: a theory of equity, reciprocity, and competition. The American Economic Review, 90(1), 166–193. 10.1257/aer.90.1.166CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, S. (2006). Microeconomics: behavior, institutions, and evolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002). The inheritance of inequality. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(3), 3–30. 10.1257/089533002760278686CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, S., Gintis, H., & Osborne Groves, M. (2008). Unequal chances: family background and economic success, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Carneiro, P., & Heckman, J. J. (2002). The evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling. The Economic Journal, 112(482), 705–734. 10.1111/1468-0297.00075CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Case, A., & Katz, L. F. (1991). The company you keep: the effects of family and neighborhood on disadvantaged youths. NBER Working Paper No. 3075.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castillo, M., Ferraro, P., Jordan, J., & Petrie, R. (2011). The today and tomorrow of kids: time preferences and educational outcomes of children. Journal of Public Economics, 95(11–12), 1377–1385. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.07.009CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cesarini, D., Dawes, C. T., Fowler, J. H., Johannesson, M., Lichtenstein, P., & Wallace, B. (2008). Heritability of cooperative behavior in the trust game. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(10), 3721–3726. 10.1073/pnas.0710069105CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charness, G., & Rabin, M. (2002). Understanding social preferences with simple tests. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(3), 817–869. 10.1162/003355302760193904CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunha, F., Heckman, J. J., Lochner, L., Masterov, D. V. Hanushek, E., & Welch, F. (2006). Interpreting the evidence on life cycle skill formation. Handbook of the economics of education, Amsterdam: North Holland 697–812.Google Scholar
Costa-Gomes, M., Crawford, V. P., & Broseta, B. (2001). Cognition and behavior in normal-form games: an experimental study. Econometrica, 69(5), 1193–1235. 10.1111/1468-0262.00239CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixit, A. (2009). Governance institutions and economic activity. The American Economic Review, 99(1), 5–24. 10.1257/aer.99.1.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckel, C. C., Grossman, P. J., Johnson, C. A., De Oliveira, A., Rojas, C., & Wilson, R. K. (2011). On the development of risk preferences: experimental evidence. CBEES Working Paper No. 2008-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G. W. (2004). The environment of childhood poverty. The American Psychologist, 59(2), 77 10.1037/0003-066X.59.2.77CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2005). Driving forces behind informal sanctions. Econometrica, 73(6), 2017–2030. 10.1111/j.1468-0262.2005.00644.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in young children. Nature, 454(7208), 1079–1083. 10.1038/nature07155CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2002). Why social preferences matter: the impact of non-selfish motives on competition, cooperation, and incentives. The Economic Journal, 112, C1–C33. 10.1111/1468-0297.00027CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism: Proximate patterns and evolutionary origins. Nature, 425, 785–791. 10.1038/nature02043CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Hoff, K. (2011). Introduction: tastes, castes and culture: the influence of society on preferences. The Economic Journal, 121(556), F396–F412. 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02478.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. M. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114(3), 817–868. 10.1162/003355399556151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., Rützler, D., & Sutter, M. (2011). The development of egalitarianism, altruism, spite and parochialism in childhood and adolescence. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5530.Google Scholar
Fong, C. M., Bowles, S., Gintis, H. Kolm, S. C., & Ythier, J. M. (2006). Strong reciprocity and the welfare state. Handbook on the economics of giving, reciprocity and altruism, Amsterdam: North-Holland 1439–1464.Google Scholar
Harbaugh, W. T., Krause, K., & Liday, S. J. (2003a). Bargaining by children. University of Oregon Economics Department Working Paper No. 2002-04.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harbaugh, W. T., Krause, K., Liday, S. J., Vesterlund, L. Ostrom, E., & Walker, J. (2003). Trust in children. Trust and reciprocity: interdisciplinary lessons from experimental research, New York: Russell Sage Foundation 302–322.Google Scholar
Heckman, J. J. (2006). Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science, 312(5782), 1900–1902. 10.1126/science.1128898CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Gintis, H., Fehr, E., Camerer, C., McElreath, R., Gurven, M., Hill, K., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Tracer, D., Marlow, F., Patton, J., Alvard, M., Gil-White, F., & Henrich, N. (2005). “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(06), 795–815.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. 10.1017/S0140525X0999152XCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Herrmann, B., Thoni, C., & Gächter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319(5868), 1362–1367. 10.1126/science.1153808CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jakiela, P., Miguel, E., & TeVelde, V. L. (2010). You’ve earned it: combining field and lab experiments to estimate the impact of human capital on social preferences. NBER Working Paper No. 16449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibbrandt, A. (2012). Are social preferences related to market performance?. Experimental Economics, 15(4), 589–603. 10.1007/s10683-012-9315-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loehlin, J. C. Bowles, S., Gintis, H., & Osborne Groves, M. (2008). Resemblance in personality and attitudes between parents and their children: genetic and environmental contributions. Unequal chances: family background and economic success, Princeton: Princeton University Press 192–207.Google Scholar
Martinsson, P., Nordblom, K., Rützler, D., & Sutter, M. (2011). Social preferences during childhood and the role of gender and age: an experiment in Austria and Sweden. Economics Letters, 110(3), 248–251. 10.1016/j.econlet.2010.11.028CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Institute of Public Health. (2001). 6th nation-wide anthropological survey of children and adolescents 2001: Czech Republic.Google Scholar
Rigdon, M., & Levine, A. S. (unpublished results). The role of expectations and gender in altruism. Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime effects: the High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40, Ypsilanti: High/Scope Press.Google Scholar
Sutter, M., & Kocher, M. G. (2007). Trust and trustworthiness across different age groups. Games and Economic Behavior, 59(2), 364–382. 10.1016/j.geb.2006.07.006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutter, M., Feri, F., Kocher, M. G., Martinsson, P., Nordblom, K., & Rützler, D. (2010). Social preferences in childhood and adolescence: a large-scale experiment. University of Gothenburg Working Papers in Economics No. 454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutter, M., Kocher, M. G., Glätzle-Rützler, D., & Trautmann, S. (2013). Impatience and uncertainty: experimental decisions predict adolescents’ field behavior. The American Economic Review, 103(1), 510–531. 10.1257/aer.103.1.510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Bauer et al. supplementary material

Bauer et. al. supplementary material
Download Bauer et al. supplementary material(File)
File 21.5 KB
Supplementary material: File

Bauer et al. supplementary material

Bauer et. al. supplementary material
Download Bauer et al. supplementary material(File)
File 3 MB