Laboratory research has shown that people’s choices about helping and sharing with others can change from situation to situation as people learn the material and social consequences of their choices. Do more momentous life experiences also facilitate longer-term learning about how to help others? Support for this hypothesis has been mixed. However, past studies have focused on childhood environmental harshness to the exclusion of environmental enrichment (e.g., access to abundant resources, rich cooperative interactions, and exemplary moral role models). In addition, prior research has explored prosocial behavior on the basis of concerns about fairness, not recipients’ actual need for help. Using principles adopted from Bayesian models of development, we hypothesized that exposures to an enriched childhood environment predispose people toward helping needy strangers. Here, we expand the measurement of childhood environmental quality to include both harsh and enriched childhood experiences, and examine how these experiences relate to adults’ decisions to share with an organization that helps victims of natural disasters. We found that a latent harsh-enriched continuum of childhood experiences was significantly associated with adults’ charitable donations in an experimental setting, and that this association was mediated by empathy towards people in need. We also found that people exposed to hardship in childhood were more generous.