Giving and Getting

• Author: Laura R. Peck,Chao Guo
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095399709341038

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Administration & Society

Volume 41 Number 5

September 2009 600-627

© 2009 SAGE Publications

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Giving and Getting

Charitable Activity and

Public Assistance

Chao Guo

University of Georgia, Athens

Laura R. Peck

Arizona State University, Phoenix

This study assesses the extent to which welfare recipients engage in giving

money and time to charitable causes. Using the 2003 Center on Philanthropy

Panel Study data, this study examines the effects of public assistance—hold-

ing constant earned income and demographic traits—on two major types of

charitable activities: charitable giving and volunteering. Using a Tobit speci-

fication, as appropriate for this type of data, the authors use a creative dif-

ferencing strategy in an attempt to overcome sticky issues of selection bias.

Evidence is found that public assistance receipt tends to suppress monetary

donations but may increase volunteer time.

Keywords: charitable giving; volunteerism; welfare; public assistance

Those who rely on government aid are often perceived as only taking.

The nature of welfare reform, however, has become more paternalist

(Mead, 1997), essentially requiring recipients to meet their “social obliga-

tions” in exchange for assistance (Mead, 1986). In some places, such as New

York City, welfare recipients who are not working full-time are mandated to

perform certain hours of unpaid community service to maintain assistance

Authors’ Note: Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Chicago, and at the

2008 annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Anaheim, California. We would like to

thank Mark Wilhelm for comments and suggestions. Tony Bertelli, Rich Clerkin, Kirsten

Gronbjerg, Chris Herbst, Laura Leete, Jeff Wenger, and Andy Whitford also provided valuable

input. Katherine Jaress provided research assistance. Thanks also goes to the agencies that fund

the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Atlantic Philanthropies for funding the collection

of data in the first three waves of the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS), and the Bill

and Melinda Gates Foundation for funding the 2007 and 2009 data collection of the Center

Panel as well as the dissemination of the 2003 data. Please address correspondence to Laura R.

Peck, 411 N Central Avenue, Suite 400, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0687; e-mail: Laura.Peck@asu.edu.

Guo, Peck / Giving and Getting 601

benefits (Baker, 1994). Some argue that workfare and community service

activities imposed as part of welfare reform—such as cleaning public parks—

may be akin to volunteering (Heller, n.d.). Outside the confines of welfare

participation, do recipients engage in charitable activity? Not only time but

also money is at question. Some research has examined the savings capacity

of low-income groups (Schreiner & Sherraden, 2007; Sherraden, 1991), but

to what extent do welfare recipients in particular make donations to charity?

This article explores these issues of welfare recipients’ donations of their

time and (quite limited) money for charitable purposes. We use the 2003

wave of the Center on Philanthropy’s Panel Study (COPPS), which

includes data on charitable giving and volunteering as a module added to

the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Although most of our non-

welfare variables are in line with findings from prior research, our contribu-

tion pertains to public assistance use in particular. In brief, we find that

prior public assistance receipt is associated with making lower financial

donations to charity, but as current public assistance income increases so

too do volunteer hours to charity.

This article contributes to the literature on giving and volunteering in

general and the effect of public assistance use on charitable activity in par-

ticular. The few existing studies on charitable giving among welfare

recipients suggest that welfare payments tend to reduce the levels of chari-

table giving (e.g., Brooks, 2002, 2004). Yet we know relatively little about

the extent to which government support for those in need would encourage

or discourage their volunteer activities. Although empirical research on

charitable giving has begun to explore giving and volunteering simultane-

ously (e.g., Andreoni, Gale, & Scholz, 1996; Brown & Lankford, 1992;

Duncan, 1999; Smith & Chang, 2002), no such empirical study exists that

examines how public assistance affects the charitable activities of recipi-

ents along financial and time dimensions. Our work aims to do so.

The rest of the article is organized into four sections. We begin with

background discussion of the effects of earned and public assistance

income on people’s charitable behaviors. We then discuss the data and

methods. The third section presents results of our data analysis and dis-

cusses the findings. We conclude with a discussion of the contributions and

limitations of the study, as well as implications for research and policy.

Background

Prior research examines a variety of factors associated with individuals’

donations of money and time. Here we discuss findings from that research,