Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/83465 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IES Working Paper No. 10/2012
Publisher: 
Charles University in Prague, Institute of Economic Studies (IES), Prague
Abstract: 
Other-regarding preferences are important for establishing and maintaining cooperative outcomes. In this paper, we study how formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood is affected by 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 children of parents with low education are more spiteful, more selfish and less altruistic. This link is robust to controlling for a rich set of child characteristics and class fixed effects. The parental effects stand out against the overall development of preferences, as we find children to become less spiteful and more altruistic with increasing age. Our findings, complemented by an analysis of the World Values Survey data, suggest that low socio-economic status affects parental effort invested in instilling other-regarding preferences into children, making them less likely to acquire cooperative types of preferences.
Subjects: 
other-regarding preferences
altruism
spite
children
family background
field experiment
JEL: 
C93
D03
D64
I24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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