Generosity and sharing among villagers: Do women give more?

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis paper explores generosity among anonymous villagers and sharing within families using a dictator game field experiment that was carried out in rural villages in Ethiopia. We find that generosity among anonymous villagers is very low compared with the findings in the dictator game literature. On average, the dictators in our sample allocate only 6% of their endowments to anonymous persons in the village, and 73% of the dictators keep all of their endowments to themselves when paired with anonymous persons. However, we found very high levels of sharing between husband and wife. In terms of gender differences, we find that women are not more generous towards anonymous persons, nor are they more likely to share within their families. In fact, there is some evidence, albeit weak, showing that women allocate less to anonymous persons than do men. Additionally, there is strong evidence that women are less likely to share their resources with their spouse than are men.

Spousal Dictator Game: Household Decisions and Other-Regarding Preferences

“…Confirming common belief, dictator giving is typically found to be greater among spouses than with anonymous strangers [9]. Married couples have also demonstrated greater cooperation [10], trust [11] and reciprocity [12].…”

Gender Priming in Solidarity Games: The Philippine Context

“…As gender differences vary across countries, and sometimes within countries, it is important to increase the existing knowledge of gender differences using country-specific or region-specific information to avoid generalizing narratives that may prove inefficient, especially when prescribing appropriate gender intervention frameworks (Peterman et al 2014). Bezu and Holden (2015), for example, performed dictator game experiments in poor rural villages in the patriarchal African society of Ethiopia. Examining whether there were gender-based differences in terms of generosity, they found that women were not more generous than their male counterparts towards anonymous villagers.…”